Browsing by Author "Maalouf, Mariannette"

The social status of women has greatly improved in the past centuries due to massive worldwide collective efforts by women and their allies. In Finland, despite scoring high on gender equality indexes, women remain a target of gender inequality and patriarchal harm. Hence, this thesis aims to study factors that influence Finnish women’s participation in collective action for gender equality. Building on the Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA), perceived injustice is hypothesized as a mediator for the relationship between gender identification and participating in collective action. Moreover, stigma consciousness is hypothesized to moderate the relationship between social identification and perceived injustice. Data was used from a previous cross-cultural project, during which university student participants (N= 250, all women) answered questionnaire items relevant to the hypotheses. The results showed no significant association between gender identification and collective action, nor any significant moderation power for stigma consciousness. Perceived injustice, however, was found to be a significant mediator for the relationship between gender identification and collective action. The rejection of two hypotheses could be explained by a series of limitations regarding the research methods, and the results call for an increase in public awareness of gender-based discrimination.