From streets to Sejm : Discourses of feminist protest and political change in Poland

Chałupnik, Małgorzata and Brookes, Gavin (2025) From streets to Sejm : Discourses of feminist protest and political change in Poland. In: Language, Gender and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe :. Palgrave Studies in Language, Gender and Sexuality . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, pp. 321-345. ISBN 9783031845277

Text (FromStreetsToSejm_ChalupnikBrookes2024)
FromStreetsToSejm_ChalupnikBrookes2024.pdf - Accepted Version
Restricted to Repository staff only until 25 July 2026.
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
Download (625kB)

Abstract

The events surrounding Ogólnopolski Strajk Kobiet (All-Poland Women’s Strike), the most massive gathering since the fall of communism, are said to have inaugurated a new form of feminism in Poland, grassroots, digitally networked and with significant youth participation. Contributing to electoral victory over Poland’s right-wing government, they also mark a major political shift amidst the continuous rise of populism and conservatism. Following the interests in digital protest communication and in the continuities in constructions of feminist collectivity, we perform a multimodal, critical discourse analysis of the Strajk’s social media posts in the period directly following the 2023 elections. The social actor representations observed foreground the enduring power of ‘the people’ in contrast to the transient power of institutional authority. The language and imagery are seen to exhibit some divergence from the human rights discourses found to characterise earlier protests, with more focus on emotional language and inclusive collectivity. We argue that the potential to rely on the collectivising ability of contemporary networked protest foregrounds feminism as a key driver of political change in Poland today.