Women in Protest

This particular study aims to investigate women’s involvement in the 2019 Hong Kong protests. One of this study’s main goals is to explore the existing suggestive evidence which could indicate the motivations behind women’s mobilization in Hong Kong. This suggestive evidence will be analyzed and put into perspective through the Lisa Baldez protest framework theory of tipping, framing and timing. This study asserts the 2019 Extradition Bill as a major point of ignition in Hong Kong, or the Tipping point of the protests, which gradually led to women’s participation in the protests. This study also cites the gendered legislation of the One-Child policy in Mainland China, its effects on the gender roles within Chinese and Hong Kong society, as well as the gendered censorship which resulted as suggestive evidence for women’s response to the protests in gendered terms, which is also termed as the framing of women’s participation the protests. Finally, this study investigates the political realignment of both the pro-Beijing and pro-democracy sides, or the timing, from which women emerged into insurgency with a sense of political opportunity through the restructuring of each side’s messaging and political objectives. Due to the timeline of the protests, another main goal for this study is to quantify the international reach of Hong Kong women’s protest movements and the extent in which women are being portrayed in local and international media, so as to further analyze the ways in which the Baldez framework is being played out in different levels of media coverage of the 2019 Hong Kong protests.