Social Movement Studies

ISSN: 1474-2837 (Print) 1474-2829 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csms20

Women’s mobilisation in the Portuguese

revolution: context and framing strategies

Daniela F. Melo

To cite this article: Daniela F. Melo (2016) Women’s mobilisation in the Portuguese
revolution: context and framing strategies, Social Movement Studies, 15:4, 403-416, DOI:
10.1080/14742837.2016.1149460

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2016.1149460

Published online: 22 Mar 2016.

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Social Movement Studies, 2016
VOL. 15, NO. 4, 403–416
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2016.1149460

Women’s mobilisation in the Portuguese revolution: context and

framing strategies
Daniela F. Melo
Department of Government & International Relations, Connecticut College, New London, CT, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article examines the role of women’s mobilisations related to the Received 22 October 2014
1974 Portuguese revolution. An in-depth analysis of three women’s Accepted 28 September
organisations through archival research and interviews with participants 2015
highlights the ways in which they participated in a cycle of contention KEYWORDS
between 1974 and 1977. Examination of framing strategies demonstrates Women’s movements;
the effects of political and cultural context. In particular, I demonstrate that Portugal; revolution;
movement–party alliances informed and constrained the diagnostic and feminism; frames
prognostic frames of women’s movements on feminism and the revolution.
Opportunity structures are shown to vary for different organisations within
the same cycle of contention. Facing relatively closed opportunities, two
of these organisations pursued framing strategies that articulated with the
Left-dominated master frame of the cycle in order to carve out spaces for
gender-specific demands while rejecting the label of feminism. The third
organisation, instead, presented a countercultural frame that alienated
the organisation from party and movement allies. Unable to overcome
ideological divisions and rivalries, the three organisations perceived each
other as competitors, rather than potential allies. While party–movement
cooperation contributed to the emergence of a fractionalised women’s
movement, it also provided important support structures to aid women’s
organisations to mobilise in a cultural and political context that was closed
to feminist demands.

On 25 April 1974, the nearly five-decade-old Salazar–Caetano regime – known as Estado Novo (New
State) – capitulated at the hands of the Armed Forces Movement (Movimento das Forças Armadas,
MFA). Between 1974 and 1976, Portuguese society – often characterised as apolitical, apathetic
and of brandos costumes (mild manners) – became heavily engaged in debates surrounding the re-­
construction of the state, the new regime and the nature of citizenship. The MFA coup quickly evolved
into a revolutionary process, as average citizens poured into the streets in its support. In the weeks
and months that followed, newspapers were filled with announcements of the formation of social
movement organisations (SMOs) and calls to action.
It was in this environment of expanded opportunities for mobilisation that women’s groups
sought an arena to voice their demands. Three SMOs came to the fore between 1974 and 1976. The
Women’s Democratic Movement (Movimento Democrático das Mulheres, MDM) began organising
in the late 1960s as a semi-legal group tied to the clandestine Portuguese Communist Party. The
Women’s Liberation Movement (Movimento de Libertação da Mulher, MLM) formed in May 1974

CONTACT  Daniela F. Melo  dfmel@conncoll.edu

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
404    D. F. Melo

as an autonomous group. Finally, in 1976, a third group formed: the Antifascist and Revolutionary
Women’s Union (União de Mulheres Antifascistas e Revolucionárias, UMAR). UMAR emerged from the
female ranks of a far-left party called Popular Democratic Union (União Democrática Popular, UDP).
I compare these three organisations by focusing on their elaboration of diagnostic and prognostic
frames about feminism and the revolution. I propose that the Left’s wariness about feminism created
a closed opportunity structure for openly feminist frames amidst a revolutionary wave of contention.
Organisations like the MDM and later UMAR carved out spaces of contention within political parties
by adopting maternal and revolutionary frames that aligned with the Left’s master frame on gender
and Socialism, rejecting feminist labels. The MLM, instead, presented a countercultural frame that
alienated the organisation from party and movement allies.
I make three interrelated theoretical arguments. First, the strong party relationship in the MDM
and UMAR cases influenced the diagnostic frames the organisations deployed between 1974 and
1977. Second, consequently, the party–movement cooperation also informed the types of strategies
and tactics adopted by the SMOs (solution and tactical frames). Finally, these alignments and framing
differences ultimately prevented the organisations from coalescing into a cohesive feminist movement
during the revolution. Unable to overcome ideological divisions and rivalries, the three organisations
perceived each other as competitors, rather than potential allies. This analysis supports and builds on
Magalhães (1998) and Tavares (2000) arguments that the MDM and UMAR were feminist1 organisa-
tions without embracing the descriptor.
During the Portuguese revolution, women organised in various ways: through women’s groups
within unions and parties, as Catholics (GRAAL), as radical feminists (MLM) and under the umbrella
of Marxist/Socialist ideologies (MDM, UMAR).2 In this study, I focus selectively on the MDM, MLM
and UMAR for three reasons. First, these organisations are good representatives of the competing
feminist SMOs that appeared during the revolution. Second, having emerged within parties, the MDM
and UMAR faced dual challenges: changing values and behaviours in society and within the parties.
These dual challenges are likely to be reflected in their frames. Finally, the three SMOs maintained
different types of relations with parties during the revolution. The MLM was autonomous, the MDM
was semi-autonomous and UMAR was dependent. In their early years, the MDM and UMAR relied
on the parties for ideological framing, members and resources. However, during the revolution, the
MDM was able to quickly grow in membership to about 5000 members, an expansion which brought
in activists who were not necessarily Communist (MDM, 1977). Their records from the period also
show that the majority of their activities were supported through their own membership quotas and
separate fundraising activities. Thus, these SMOs present good opportunities to explore how different
party–movement relationships impact women’s SMOs’ framing activities.
It is also the case that further consideration of women’s movements in the context of the Portuguese
revolution is needed. Literature has tended to stress the role of elites in the transition and to underplay
that of social movements (Cerezales, 2003; Pinto, 2008, 2013). In studies that do consider movements,
women’s mobilisation has often been overlooked in lieu of other movements, such as labour and squat-
ters (Bermeo, 1986; Cerezales, 2003; Chilcote, 2010; Downs, 1989; Hamman & Manuel, 1999; Pinto,
2013). Consequently, most political and sociological analyses of the revolution effectively marginalise
women’s mobilisation. It has only been in recent years that women’s activism in the transition has
began to command scholarly and literary attention. Scholars, feminists, activists and journalists have
produced a number of studies to show that women were active participants of these political processes
(Carmo & Amâncio, 2004; Ferreira, 1998; Fonseca, 2014; Lindim, 2012; Magalhães, 1998; Monteiro,
2010; Prata, 2010; Santos, 2010; Tavares, 2000, 2011). However, few studies of Portuguese women’s
SMOs exist in English, and frame analyses of Portuguese feminism are nearly absent.
My analysis contributes to the understanding of the Portuguese revolutionary process by high-
lighting the ways in which these three women’s organisations participated in the cycle of contention
between 1974 and 1977. In doing so, I confront a ‘democratic paradox’ often faced by women’s groups
during transitions: how can a plural, progressive, left-wing revolutionary cycle that culminated in a
democratic regime exclude feminist demands? And alternatively, how do women’s movements adapt
 Social Movement Studies   405

their strategies to make gains in spite of closed opportunity structures? The answers to these questions
contribute to ongoing discussions among social movement scholars regarding the relationship between
context and social movement frames.

Method, conceptual definitions and theoretical tools

The paper draws upon qualitative data relating to the activities, debates and strategies of the three
women’s organisations during the Portuguese revolution, collected during a period of fieldwork in Portugal
in 2010–2011. It uses information gathered from a sample of 32 in-depth interviews with women who
were movement leaders and activists in the 3 organisations.3 It also includes archival research relating to
organisational documents from the MDM, MLM and UMAR.4 Given the sensitivity of certain materials,
I preserve the identity of those interviewed by referring to them with fictitious first names.

SMOs, parties and alliances

I define social movements as composed of formal and informal organisations, including SMOs and
other mobilising structures (see Kriesi, 2007). A social movement is, therefore, an agglomeration
of groups that share some common goals and interests, but that may vary in terms of their tactics,
strategies and organisational styles. Political parties are often defined, along with SMOs and interest
groups, as intermediary organisations between society and the state (Burnstein, 1998, p. 40). Unlike
SMOs and interest groups, however, political parties are legally entitled to participate in the electoral
process and thus compete for office (Burnstein, 1998; Jenkins, 1995).
Parties and social movements often work together as allies. Here, I define alliances broadly as
cooperative arrangements formed by actors in order to achieve common goals. I will refer to the
MDM–PCP and the UMAR–UDP relationships as alliances. As discussed earlier, the SMOs were
semi-autonomous and dependent on the parties, respectively. Using the term alliance, however, helps
emphasise that the SMOs and the parties were distinct actors that shared an ideological vision for the
revolution and coordinated several actions with the two parties. At the same time, they had separate
leadership structures, different goals and, at least in the MDM’s case, separate sources of financing.

Frames
SMOs and political parties are active agents in the creation, interpretation and deployment of meaning
and ideas. Within the context of social movement studies, this process is often referred to as framing,
that is, ‘the signifying work or meaning construction engaged in by movement adherents (e.g. leaders,
activists and rank-and-file participants) and other actors’ (Snow, 2013, p. 1). Collective action frames
are those framing activities that shape understandings, legitimate and encourage mobilisation within
the social movement arena.
We know from several studies about cycles of protest that collective action frames emerging early
in the cycle come to function as schematic maps that guide and constrain the mobilising activities
of other movements and actors in the cycle (Benford & Snow, 2000; McAdam, 2013; della Porta &
Rucht, 1995; Snow & Benford, 1992). A master frame can be described as an overarching, generic
cultural frame that, ‘provide(s) the interpretive medium through which collective actors associated
with different movements … assign blame for the problem they are attempting to ameliorate’ (Snow &
Benford, 1992, p. 139). Master frames influence SMOs’ framing tasks by identifying the problem that
needs solving and defining who is to blame (diagnostic framing), by articulating a solution (prognostic
framing), and by providing a rationale for mobilisation (motivational framing) (Snow & Benford, 1992).
For the purposes of this paper, I will focus attention on one process – the development and adoption
of collective action frames, especially master frames, by political parties and social movements – and
the two core framing tasks of diagnostic and prognostic framing.
406    D. F. Melo

Political opportunity structure

I argue that context – (POS) – has a direct effect on the discursive strategies – diagnostic and prognostic
frames – adopted by women’s organisations. Much of the work within the political process approach
has focused on a set of independent variables that constitute the POS, which is described as the con-
stellation of political actors and configuration of power relations that shape opportunities for different
groups. Sidney Tarrow (1983, 1989) offered a popular definition of the POS, which identified four
elements: (1) degree of openness of formal political access (see also Kitschelt, 1986; Kriesi, Koopmans,
Duyvendak, & Giugni, 1995; McAdam, 1982); (2) the existence and availability of alliance partners
(Kriesi et al., 1995; Rucht, 2007); (3) the stability of political alignments (della Porta & Rucht, 1995;
Kriesi, 1995); and (4) level of inter- and intra-elite conflict (della Porta & Rucht, 1995). My analysis
pays special attention to the second element – alliance partners – though all four are interconnected.
The Portuguese case presents an opportunity to examine how the presence/absence of party–move-
ment alliances can inform movement frames. I will suggest that while party–movement cooperation
contributed to the emergence of a fractionalised women’s movement, it also provided important
support structures to aid women’s organisations to mobilise in a cultural and political context that
was closed to feminist demands.

The portuguese revolution: open opportunities for mobilisation, closed

opportunities for feminist discourse
The 1974, MFA coup in Portugal brought down a regime that was characterised by personalised,
authoritarian and conservative politics. The Estado Novo was deeply influenced by Catholic morality
in its understandings of the private sphere, especially regarding families and gender roles (Neves, 2001;
Pimentel, 2002). There was a ‘natural order’ enshrined in law that separated the sexes and, consequently,
their contributions to the nation. Men were hardworking, Christian fathers and providers (Rosas,
2001). Women were equally hardworking, Christian mothers and caretakers. Together, the idealised
family raised children that would uphold the moral, civic and patriotic duties of the Estado Novo.
In turn, the revolution was primarily a left-wing affair, as Left-leaning MFA officers dominated
the provisional governments. The revolution was marked by three important stages. The first stage
(April 1974–March 1974) was characterised by a rapid diminishing of the costs of contention for
social movements and a progressive move to the Left in the provisional governments. Two counter-
revolutionary attempts from the right – in September 1974 and March 1975 – were foiled by the MFA.
In the second period (March 1974–November 1975), the MFA leadership became visibly split along
ideological lines – moderates, Communists (Gonçalvists) and radicals (far-left). Over the summer of
1975, the Revolutionary Council, controlled by the MFA, became increasingly radicalised to the Left.
At the same time, the election of a Constituent Assembly in April 1975 placed the centre-right and
centre-left parties in control of writing the constitution. During the ‘Hot Summer’ that followed, the
centrist parties, the Communists and the radicals mobilised different factions of the population and
of the social movement sector to support their claims to control the government and their plans for
the future shape of the regime. This tense and chaotic period of unstable political alignments came
to a head in November 1975, when a successful counter-coup by MFA moderates resulted in the
imprisonment of MFA Gonçalvists and radicals. This coup marks the beginning of the third stage of
the revolution, when moderate MFA officers that supported the centre-right and centre-left parties
took control of the process (for a detailed analysis, see Maxwell, 1986).
The revolution opened the structure of political opportunities for social movements, but not all
SMOs seeking to mobilise encountered the same level of opportunities. While the repressive costs of
mobilisation were lowered, women faced a cultural environment – what Noonan (1995) calls ‘a cultural
opportunity structure’– in which institutional elites were wary of female political mobilisation and
hostile to feminist discourse. Thus, cultural opportunities for demands associated with feminism –
sexuality, reproductive rights and end of patriarchy – were closed.
 Social Movement Studies   407

The Portuguese Left adopted a discourse dominated by class analysis that centred on working-class
solidarity and radicalism, but rejected gender inequality and feminism as valid frames. Instead, they
viewed feminism as a destabilising and divisive movement, pitting workers against one another on the
basis of gender. Furthermore, feminism was generally dismissed as a bourgeois movement, an expres-
sion of frustration by middle- and upper-class women who had little in common with the working class
(Cristina, 2011; Sofia, 2011). In other words, the dominant frame in the Portuguese revolutionary Left
subordinated gender to class and effectively ‘censored’ the term ‘feminist’ (Carmo & Amâncio, 2004).
The Portuguese Left was not exceptional in this regard. As several scholars have shown, revolution-
ary Lefts have often been hostile towards feminism or women’s strategic interests (Moghadam, 2011;
Molyneux, 1985; Noonan, 1995; Waylen, 2003). In Portugal, the Left’s ideology reinforced culturally
consonant images of women as the traditional ‘mother’ or as the revolutionary ‘worker’, leaving no
space for a collective action frame whereby women would be portrayed as seeking greater levels of
liberation. Thus, women’s groups were mobilising within party structures and cultural environments
that rejected seeing women’s concerns as legitimate when they pushed the boundaries of ‘maternal’
and ‘worker’ issues. As a result, activists adapted their discourse to the Left’s framing constraints (and
one should note, to the right’s as well). A good example of this process is found in the MDM’s anti-war
pamphlet of 8 March 1970:
The People’s children are sent to war, the People’s money is burnt in the war. And every day that goes by Portugal
becomes poorer! The young die or are mutilated, those that say no to the war go into exile. […] The ‘no’ to the
war is felt by millions of Portuguese, but it is particularly felt by women, the mothers and wives of the soldiers
that make war. […] Portuguese mothers, stop your sons from leaving for the war. Stop your sons from killing
the sons of other women, who, just like yours, are not criminals; they are men fighting for the independence of
their nations, subjugated to exploitation and misery like ours (Neves, 1988, p. 19).
Motherhood was used as a mobilising theme against the Portuguese colonial wars in Angola,
Mozambique and Guiné-Bissau, as well as an outlet to criticise the regime. In its early years, the
MDM attempted to mobilise women within a repressive regime where the Left was reduced to the
Communists and smaller far-left groups (Accornero, 2012). There was no ‘political space’ and no
‘cultural space’ for women to mobilise using a feminist frame. When the authors known as the Three
Marias released their feminist literary work in 1972, As Novas Cartas Portuguesas, they were arrested
for breaking laws on moral conduct. MDM women manipulated the master frame by mobilising
within a maternal frame accepted both within the clandestine left- and the right-wing regime, creating
a relatively safe space for women to protest within an authoritarian regime.
The revolution marked a rupture with the Estado Novo’s political institutions, elites and ideology,
but not with societal understandings of gender roles. The PCP and various other parties in the far-
left continued to associate all feminisms with a narrow interpretation of ‘radical feminism’, labelling
feminists as sexually promiscuous women espousing bourgeois lifestyles and morality (Ana, 2011;
Cristina, 2011; Sofia, 2011). A good example of this framing can be found in the pages of Diário de
Lisboa, within a couple of weeks of the MLM’s creation. In the newspaper’s Women’s Supplement, the
journalist Gina Reis (1974, p. 28) commented that while,
…it is certainly exasperating for women to be treated as inferior beings susceptible to ‘feminine whims’ and as
objects of social discrimination, we are nonetheless forced to agree that certain feminine demand-making groups
are too extremist and perhaps not always following the best path. Citing José Chombart … ‘it is necessary for
these demonstrations to avoid becoming infantile and unnecessarily provocative, by for instance, burning bras or
parading a group of lesbians ostentatiously, whose sexual practices are their own business and add nothing to the
image of woman in a society’. (emphasis mine)
On the same page, the newspaper transcribed an interview with filmmaker Lauro António, where he
called the feminist movement ‘ridiculous’, unjustified in post-25 April Portugal and even ‘grotesque’.
Instead, he claimed,
At the present moment we need to mobilise women and children, black, white, and yellow, for the unitary strug-
gle of the Portuguese people, for the rebuilding of the state. The exploitations of woman by man, or of man by
woman, are framed within the broader struggle: the exploitation of everyone by some.
408    D. F. Melo

These two positions exemplify a societal frame that rejected feminist women’s movements and explain
to a great degree the near absence of openly feminist organisations. In spite of expanded opportuni-
ties for mobilisation and at the peak of revolutionary fervour, only one autonomous feminist group
emerged in Portugal, the MLM. This conspicuous absence of openly feminist mobilisation can be partly
explained by the Left’s exclusion of feminist demands and by a societal master frame that associated
feminism with sexual provocation.
In short, though the repressive structures of the state had been lifted, women still faced closed
opportunity structures. Activists in UMAR and the MDM, then, took advantage of their double mil-
itancy to gain legitimacy for women’s mobilisation by massaging their demands into the dominant
frame and pursuing a strategy that entailed changing the party’s perception of feminist causes from
within, so that the party would then push for it nationally. One MDM leader at the time stressed that
the organisation was divided on the matter of working closely with the PCP or ‘breaking up’ (Ana,
2011). Ultimately, she argued, as the MDM gained members, they could use the organisation’s size as
leverage to set frame transformation in motion within the party:
First, by conquering a space, we reinforced our identity and gained strength. Therefore, we started to hesitate
less … that entails a very interesting but difficult job to convince, or wage a battle within the PCP to make them
understand our points of view. To achieve that we had to play ours cards: the strength that the movement was
acquiring [since the 25 April] and their realisation that they could not lose that force, that they could not create
splits; and that the movement already had a very strong and determined internal dynamic.
In 1974 and 1975, a complete break with the PCP was made less appealing by the party’s strong posi-
tions in the provisional governments. The MDM leadership – whose own vision of the revolution
tended to align with the PCP’s – hoped that continued cooperation would give the MDM access and
influence in the new regime. As the quote above illustrates, the MDM adjusted to the Left’s frame
while aiming at changing the party’s openness to feminist issues.
UMAR’s party was much smaller than the PCP. The UDP only had one representative in the
Constituent Assembly (April 1974 – April 1975) and in the National Assembly elected in 1975.
However, the UDP’s frames also rejected feminism along lines similar to the PCP’s. Like other small
Maoist-influenced parties in the Portuguese far-left, the UDP focused on an imagined ‘proletarian
morality’ that depicted the Portuguese working class as religious, conservative and closed to discus-
sions about sexuality (Cardina, 2010). Consequently, the party avoided internal discussions about the
‘body’ and ‘desires’, topics that were associated with the ‘bourgeoisie’. This party frame informed the
diagnostic and prognostic frames that UMAR adopted in 1976.
In the next two sections, I make the case that the presence or absence of party allies during the
revolutionary period had profound impacts on the diagnostic and prognostic framings adopted by
the MDM, MLM and UMAR. Organisations with party allies adapted their diagnoses and prognoses
to the Left’s frame, and attempted to pursue the same goals as feminists without enduring the conse-
quences of the label. These strategic choices had lasting impacts on the different tactics that the groups
pursued and on their willingness to embrace topics like reproductive rights. They also help to explain
the lack of cohesion in the Portuguese women’s movement of the period.

Diagnostic framings
For collective action to take place, a critical number of individuals need to coalesce around a common
understanding of injustice (Benford, 1997; Gamson, Fireman, & Rytina, 1982; McAdam, 1982). In this
process, groups construct a narrative that identifies victims of injustice and that places the blame for
that victimisation on a given authority, proceeding to amplify that construction to the rest of society.
For William Gamson et al. (1982), these injustice frames are present in every movement and, in fact,
tend to plant the seed from which collective action eventually flourishes. If we return for a moment
to the MDM’s anti-war pamphlet from 1970, we can clearly see this diagnostic process underway.
The perpetrator of injustice, though never named, is clearly the state (or the regime) that subjugates
the ‘People’s children’ and ‘nations’ to exploitation, misery and war. The principal victims are women:
 Social Movement Studies   409

mothers and wives of soldiers sent to the war. This message is also constructed to resonate with the
broader society, using traditional frames of women as domestic citizens (mothers, wives). Mothers are
called to action in stopping the war by influencing their sons to abandon an illegitimate war.
After 25 April 1974, the MDM’s framing underwent a marked evolution. The theme of ‘motherhood’
was supplanted by the ‘revolutionary working woman’. The revolutionary woman was mother and worker,
thus compounding challenges in the workplace with societal and family issues. The MDM focused on
the challenges faced by women who had to work: equal pay, childcare centres, maternity leave, educa-
tion, hygiene, healthcare and cost-of-living inflation (MDM, 1975a, pp. 3–4). Focusing on the ‘working
mother-child’ relationship, the MDM sought to join the vanguard of the revolution towards Socialism, while
constructing a message of ‘feminine struggle’ that was compatible with the Left’s frame:
The MDM, aware of its responsibilities and of the focal role that the Movement plays these days, has developed
efforts to elevate the ideological, political and cultural level of women, in order to achieve their incorporation and
conscious participation in the revolutionary process of constructing a socialist society; the only type of society
capable of addressing the needs of women and men for the end of exploitation. (MDM, 1975b, p. 4)
This passage from an internal evaluation of MDM activity in 1974–1975 illustrates well how this
organisation incorporated its injustice frame into the Left’s master frame. In doing so, the MDM carved
its own space and created its own opportunity structure in an arena closed to gender-specific issues.
This strategy came at a cost: reproductive rights took a backseat to the Socialist revolution. MDM
leader, Ana (2011), recalled:
On the 25th April, we had a communiqué that had been approved in 1973 ready [for distribution]. In that doc-
ument, we included [the demand for] abortion rights. (…) A [PCP] member had just been freed from prison
(…). He was a member the central committee during the clandestine period. When he sees the document, he
says that we cannot include abortion. Two or three of us [MDM leaders] had to make a decision and we did not
know what to do. This was a violence against us (…) His argument was that [abortion] was ill timed, that our
country was strongly influenced by the Catholic Church, that the country wasn’t yet won over for the divorce
cause, that the context was still inauspicious for changing mentalities. There was, therefore, strong [PCP] oppo-
sition to our position, arguing that [abortion] would jeopardise our ability to establish ourselves and be accepted
by the right-wing forces.
According to this MDM leader, abortion was crossed out of many pamphlets. Yet, in an MDM (2009,
p. 36) publication, the organisation claimed that on 27 April 1974, they presented the MFA with
demands for the decriminalisation of abortion. Abortion was clearly a concern for the MDM since
early on, but also a point of friction with the PCP. The movement leaders were not ready for a rupture
with the party and gave in to the PCP’s pressure, agreeing to postpone that battle until the context
became more propitious.
Turning our attention to the MLM, the historical and political context remains the same, but the
alliance structures are missing. In borrowing its feminist ideology and tactical guidebook from the
American and French Women’s Liberation Movement, the group was able to touch upon issues that
had been taboo or virgin ground in Portuguese society: divorce, female pleasure, abortion. Like the
MDM, the MLM was a group that implicitly supported the Left. Unlike their counterparts, however,
MLM women were primarily concerned with fostering a feminist consciousness independent of party
ideologies.
The MLM’s injustice frame centred on the subjugation of women in the public and private spheres,
accusing the state, the family and the church of relegating women to secondary roles as citizens, wives
and mothers. In their most famous demonstration on 13 January 1975, MLM activists carried signs
with demands that included: ‘Democracy yes, phallocracy no!’ ‘Yes to abortion!’ ‘We want pleasure!’
(Sofia, 2011). The abortion question quickly became the flag issue for the movement. An activist who
joined the movement in January 1975, recalled that ‘we centred on abortion because it was the only
issue likely to be discussed and undertaken by the left-wing parties; but they were not interested’
(Catarina, 2011). Other issues included: equal pay for equal work, the professional and personal
fulfilment of women (‘women cannot be treated as the second sex’), women’s control over their own
bodies, contraceptive and reproductive rights, decriminalisation of prostitution and the transformation
of all societal structures constraining men and women (Diário de Lisboa, 1974, p. 17).
410    D. F. Melo

Rejecting the MDM’s worker–mother–revolutionary triumvirate, the MLM proposed a complete

overhaul of a societal master frame that reduced women to traditional domestic roles and negated
their agency and equality as citizens. This was a diagnosis that no sector in Portuguese politics was
willing to embrace. As a result, the MLM was neither able to develop alliances with parties nor with
the MDM. In the aftermath of the 13 January 1975 demonstration, where a crowd of thousands of
men verbally abused and physically attacked MLM activists, the MDM issued a statement to the press
where it distanced the organisation from the MLM, claiming that it did not identify with feminist
movements (Tavares, 2000, p. 97).
Unlike the MLM and the MDM, UMAR entered the stage at the end of the revolutionary cycle
(1976). As a latecomer, the organisation sought to mobilise the female constituency at a juncture
where the state was cracking down on the social sector, the far-left was factionalised and the general
population was demobilising. These factors have often been associated with collapse or radicalisation
of SMOs – a less-than-propitious environment to launch a new organisation (McAdam, 2013; Tarrow,
1994). This unreceptive environment coupled with the successful example of the MDM’s alliance with
the PCP, may help explain UMAR’s umbilical connection to the UDP (as opposed to the alternative
strategy of launching an autonomous women’s organisation). The UDP was an effective clutch on
which UMAR leaned for ideological, organisational and financial resources as it tried to define its own
message amidst declining opportunities for mobilisation. A founding member of the organisation,
claimed that UMAR was a response to the perception that,
Women were mobilising and someone needed to organise them. Not into a party, but rather into a front. In
practice, UMAR was supervised by the party [UDP] but only indirectly, because the organisation always had its
own organisational structures. This was a fundamental point in ensuring that the organisation would not be a
department, but its own body. (Mariana, 2011)
Mariana’s statement indicates a certain duality at the organisation’s inception regarding the relation-
ship with UDP. Like the MDM, UMAR developed an injustice frame adapted to the Left’s rejection of
feminism. At this early stage, UMAR’s injustice frame focused on women as victims of an emerging
capitalist order (the post-revolutionary regime):
Our tasks must be the fight against drugs, against prostitution and against criminality, while fully conscious that
those evils are the ulcers of capitalism and that only socialism will cure them. (…) Only working-class women
can and should exalt the proletarian moral, combating pornography by forming neighbourhood commissions
to stop the dissemination of pornographic books and films, as to preserve the good customs and traditions of the
people. (UMAR, 1976, p. 3, emphasis mine)
Early on, UMAR opted for an injustice frame that depicted working women as victims of the evils of
capitalism (drugs, prostitution, criminality), offering a motivational frame whereby activists would
become the moral vanguard of the proletarian revolution. This construction resonated with a broader
Catholic morality in Portugal, justifying a non-traditional female behaviour (mobilisation) for the
sake of a socially well-accepted cause for women (the preservation of ‘good customs and traditions’).
Like the MDM, UMAR activists avoided controversial feminist topics, subordinating women’s sexual
and reproductive emancipation to the proletarian struggle against capitalism. This strategy allowed
both organisations to carve spaces for women-specific demands in parties that were unreceptive to
feminism, and to continue lobbying those parties to change their positions on reproductive rights.
Note that both the PCP and the UDP would end up being policy entrepreneurs on the issue of abortion
just a few years later (Prata, 2010; Tavares, 2007, 2011).

Prognostic framings
The process through which movements and SMOs articulate solutions to their problems is often
referred to in the literature as prognostic framing. In other words, organisations formulate what an
alternative reality should look like and develop strategies to effect the change that they want in soci-
ety by designing a plan of action (Benford & Snow, 2000). My analysis will focus on two elements of
prognostication: solution framing (what is to be done) and tactical framing (how to implement those
 Social Movement Studies   411

solutions). I make the case that the organisations’ prognostic framing is constrained by their diagnos-
tic, and consequently, by the SMOs’ relationships with the Left. This argument reflects Benford and
Snow’s (2000, p. 610) claim that, ‘the identification of specific problems and causes tend to constrain
the range of possible ‘reasonable’ solutions and strategies advocated’.
Both UMAR and MDM activists saw the solution to women’s problems in the construction of a
Socialist society. However, the two groups strongly disagreed on what that Socialist society would
look like. The MDM preferred the route proposed by the PCP and the Gonçalvists,5 that is, a strong
Socialist, hierarchical and centralised state, where Socialism would trickle down from the vanguard to
the people. UMARistas, on the other hand, aligned with a vision of the revolutionary far-left, favour-
ing the empowerment of local communities.6 For these activists, the route to women’s emancipation
could be found in the workplace. If women became equal partners with men, earning equal salaries
and sharing the same workplace rights, then they would be able to lead productive lives. Once we
understand this interpretation of the sociopolitical context, it becomes clear that the natural solution
was to develop strategies that ensure that women could join the workforce and participate as full
citizens. Consequently, MDM activists devoted their efforts and considerable resources to promote
women’s legal rights and education, as well as the construction of supporting structures that would
enable them to work outside the house, such as childcare facilities, kindergartens, maternity hospitals
and schools (MDM, 1975a, p. 12).
Up until the moment when it became clear that the Socialist revolution was changing course towards
a social democratic model, the MDM’s tactical framing included a strong component of cooperation
with the revolutionary forces (MFA and PCP). The organisation’s narrative called for the insertion
of the MDM into the broader popular movement (which included some of the largest movements of
the revolutionary period: urban squatters, rural squatters, labour). Internal documents from 1974 to
1975 show this solution and tactical framing:
The MDM is an autonomous Movement, acting within the general framework of the unitary democratic forces
and collaborating with them in that plan. (…) We have a long political battle ahead, of great exigency, and it is
urgent for us to focus our attention and to take adequate measures to deal with this reality: if we fail to move
quickly and efficiently, we shall lose the women’s battle. And the reactionaries shall win it (…). Our work needs
to focus predominantly on female workers … (MDM, 1974, 3–4 August, emphasis mine)
Following the 28 September 1974, when counterrevolutionary forces failed to execute a successful
coup, the MDM mobilised women against the reactionaries:
At the end of September, the MDM’s activity focused, especially, on the response to the reactionary offensive
of 28 September. MDM chapters made their presence felt, participating in the barricades by bringing food to the
revolutionaries and being physically present in the long waking nights. On October 6, MDM organisations par-
ticipated in the ‘day of work,’ launched by then-Prime Minister Vasco Gonçalves to celebrate the crushing victory
of the popular forces against the reactionary forces. (MDM, 1975a, p. 5, emphasis mine)
On 11 March 1975:
The MDM participated in the stoppage of companies on 11 March, mobilising the female workers for street
actions, in which the population, side by side with progressive military officers, defended once again the revolu-
tionary conquests. On this day the MDM distinguished itself by organising the distribution of food supplies to
the military and civilians in the barricades. (p. 18, emphasis mine)
And, regarding the post-11 March nationalisations and expropriations:
On 16 April 1975, the MDM supported the measures of the IV provisional government: nationalising banks
and insurance companies, freezing the price of bread, meat, milk, sugar, olive oil, etc. before the end of the year,
and expropriating the dry-land properties larger than 500 ha and irrigated landholdings greater than 50 ha. The
MDM invited all women to vote. (p. 18)
The MDM engaged in collaborative, assimilative tactics (for instance, petitions, denouncements,
‘insider tactics’) with the revolutionary authorities. The organisation pursued tactics that were con-
sonant with the Left’s master frame and complementary with the popular movement. They viewed
Socialism as an emancipatory project, thus lending their own resources and cooperating with the
MFA, the PCP, the neighbourhood commissions, the syndicates and the rural squatters, to make sure
that the revolution continued its Socialist path.
412    D. F. Melo

After 25 November 1975, both the MDM–PCP and the UMAR–UDP alliances advocated a return
to the ‘revolutionary path’ towards Socialism. The MDM changed its prognostic framing from coop-
eration to confrontation7 with the new state elites, represented by the centrist parties. In the years that
followed, UMAR and MDM issued similar diagnostics of oppression for women workers: the capitalist
state, an exploitative bourgeoisie, the rise in the cost of living, a reactionary right. UMAR, in particular,
denounced that the revolution had been stopped in its tracks by the reactionary forces and that the
solution – the return to the enlightened path – resided in allowing the ‘true left’ to return to power.
Once again, the MLM followed a significantly different framing path. The group was composed
almost exclusively of middle- and upper-class women. In Portuguese society, these women were outli-
ers. ‘We came from a privileged group of women’, one MLM activist recalled, ‘and we needed strategies
to reach other women: factory workers, housewives, prostitutes, live-in maids’ and ‘[We needed to] find
them in larger groups and try to “evangelise” them’ (Cristina, 2011). Consequently, one of the most
significant hurdles faced by the MLM was finding ways to create bridges and appeal across classes –
develop a resonant mobilising frame – so that a group of upper-class intellectuals could be perceived
as attuned with the realities of the average Portuguese women, without alienating or intimidating their
target group. This proved to be a herculean task without the help of significant actors such as parties:
… many women were organised in workers’ commissions, but we couldn’t enter there because we were the bour-
geoisie. (…) During that period, speaking about women’s problems was considered highly ‘bourgeois.’ The only
politically-correct cause was the labour struggle. […] Women were mobilised with men in workers’ commissions,
and we could not penetrate those spaces because we were ‘the bourgeois women’. […] We had conflicts with the
PCP when we tried to speak about the condition of women. (Cristina, 2011)
Yet, without the constraints of frames imposed by party allies and wanting to do away with maternal
frames, the MLM fostered solution and tactical frames that were strikingly different from the MDM
during the same period: confrontation, international networking, extra-legal direct action.
For most of 1974, the organisation tried to reach out to working women, but also to other segments
of the population that the MDM Left out: housewives, live-in maids, prostitutes and other intellectuals.
After the 13 January 1975 demonstration, the organisation took a more proactive approach to dis-
seminating its diagnostic framing. Collaborating with the Social and Political Sciences Institute, they
launched MCALG (Movimento pela contracepção e aborto livre) – Movement for Free Contraception
and Abortion, inspired in the French organisation by the same name, MLAC. Under the auspices
of MCALG, the MLM initiated the largest pro-abortion and contraception campaign until then in
Portugal.
Since the Armed Forces Movement, the press, and the political parties have consistently ignored this abortion
campaign, the MLM organised an International Women’s Week for the Legalization of Abortion and Contraceptive
Information. Hundreds of women came from England, France, Italy, and Germany, and spent a week making
posters, giving out leaflets, attending demonstrations, and questioning men in the Armed Forces Movement and
left political parties. (Schmitz, 1975, p. 2)
At the peak of the Hot Summer, as the country plunged into a situation of near civil war, MCALG organ-
ised the International Women’s Week for the Legalisation of Abortion and Contraceptive Information.
The French MLAC delegation took advantage of that week to teach a handful of MLM activists about
dilation and aspiration techniques to perform abortions (Joana, 2011). With this know-how, MLM
activists were able to move from the dissemination of information to the actual delivery of services,
engaging for several months in this extra-legal form of direct action. The dissonant feminist frame
was more effective at mobilising international support for the MLM than in stimulating domestic
recruitment. The MLM’s activation of these networks, however, also resonated more vibrantly outside
than inside Portugal.

Some conclusions on context and framing strategies

The diagnostic and prognostic framing strategies of the Portuguese women’s movement have been
characterised by continuity as well as change. Organising within the PCP during the authoritarian
 Social Movement Studies   413

period, the MDM chose to deploy a ‘safe’ maternal frame to oppose the colonial wars. During the
revolution the motherhood frame evolved, calling to action the mother–worker–revolutionary in
helping to achieve Socialism. Similarly, UMAR crafted a narrative that depicted working women as
the moral agents of society at the vanguard of the struggle against the evils of capitalism. Both fram-
ing strategies helped these groups carve spaces for gender-specific demands within closed cultural
opportunity structures for feminism.
My argument builds on Ferreira’s contention that the domination of women’s mobilisation by parties
presented strong obstacles to the development of autonomous organisations (Ferreira, 1998, p. 183).
I offer that the nature of the master frame regarding the proper roles for women in society was such
during the Portuguese revolution that women did not have an opening to mobilise independently
on feminist demands for sexual and reproductive rights. As a consequence, the double militancy
of MDM and UMAR women with political parties allowed the organisations to virtually create an
opportunity structure where there was none. Recognising this context, the MDM chose to continue
cooperating with the PCP, in order to lobby the party from the inside and to eventually convince the
PCP to introduce bills on abortion. The MLM’s case demonstrates that in the absence of a party ally,
mass mobilisation during the revolution was an arduous and thankless task for feminist groups. The
alliances presented costs in terms of the struggle for reproductive rights – a right that the organisations
wanted enshrined in law – but which the MDM and UMAR sacrificed for the short term in order to
safeguard their organisations.
Some scholars have also highlighted the connection between competitive diagnostic frames and
intra-movement conflict (Benford, 1993). In the Portuguese case, each organisation’s adherence to
a different diagnostic frame during a period of heightened rivalries among left-wing projects made
cooperation between the MDM and UMAR very unlikely. The Portuguese far-left was deeply distrust-
ful of the PCP and generally unwilling to cooperate – this intra-left competition fuelled animosity
between the MDM and UMAR even after the revolution ended, when both organisations agreed that
the revolution had been usurped by capitalist forces. Moreover, the Left’s exclusion of feminism and
feminist demands ensured that the MDM and the MLM were also unlikely to coordinate actions. In
my interviews with activists from the three organisations in 2011, it became clear that the activists from
different organisations had viewed each other during the transition as competitors for resources and
members, with different understandings on prognoses to emancipate Portuguese women. Part of my
argument is that the different diagnostic frames set each organisation on a tactical path that further
entrenched their disparities. The Portuguese case shows that collective action frames within a cycle of
contention – and within a movement – compete with each other. Additionally, the themes animating
inter-organisational framing competition draw heavily on the cycle’s master frame. The presence of
movement–party alliances further demarcates and exacerbates those strategic diagnoses and prognoses.
More research and comparison between cases needs to be done on the connection between master
frames and inter-organisational competition. Future studies should also compare how the frames
of these feminist organisations compared with those of non-feminist women’s groups, like GRAAL.
Over time, the MDM and UMAR – the only women’s organisations to survive from the revolu-
tionary period – gained more ideological autonomy and distance from their respective parties. The
democratic regime and Portugal’s eventual membership in the European Union created opportunities
(and pressures) for the Left’s master frame to accommodate feminist demands. Research remains to
be done on the evolution and adaptation of women’s framing strategies to the new democratic context
in Portugal.

Notes
1. 
Feminist organisations are defined as SMOs that challenge male dominance in the government, employment,
family and other social institutions. They seek to change society’s understandings and behaviours about gender
equality, women’s empowerment and politics ('the personal is political’).
414    D. F. Melo

2. 
Women’s groups also participated in the state-level Commission on the Feminine Condition in 1975 (Monteiro,
2010).
3. 
Here, I only cite activists who were active in the organisations between 1974 and 1976. The entire sample included
activists who joined the organisations at different stages, beginning in 1968 for the MDM.
4. 
MDM documents were consulted at the Centro de Arquivo e Documentação do MDM, Av. Almirante
Reis, n.90-7A, Lisbon. UMAR’s documents, as well as MLM documents, are available at the Centro de
Documentação e Arquivo Elina Guimarães, currently at Rua da Cozinha Económica, Bloco D, Lisbon. Some
of the documents have been digitised and can be consulted at http://arquivo.mdm.org.pt/ (MDM) and
http://casacomum.org/cc/arquivos?set=e_7486 (UMAR and MLM).
5. 
Supporters of Prime Minister Vasco Golçalves (July 1974–August 1975), widely regarded as a Communist.
6. 
Hammond (1988, p. 202) depicts the Gonçalvist (Communists) and far-left’s model of a future society as follows:
‘for the far left, the power of a vigorous, autonomous popular movement; for the Gonçalvists, the power of a
society directed from above and enthusiastically supported from below’.
7. 
This confrontation was mostly discursive, as the window of opportunity for mass mobilisation had closed with
the end of the revolutionary cycle. Furthermore, by 1976 the state was reasserting and centralising control over
security, cracking down on violent groups and on all sorts of extra-legal activism. Regardless, a violent tactical
frame would have clashed directly with the mother–worker–revolutionary frame to which both the MDM and
UMAR subscribed.

Acknowledgements
This research was made possible through generous research grants by the Fulbright Commission and the Tinker
Foundation. I would also like to thank the activists who donated their time for interviews, as well as the MDM and
UMAR, for allowing me access to their archives.

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