Female activists against nature: How gendered expectations can constrain an environmental movement

Although existing studies highlight that new institutional logics are grounded in pre-existing
norms and beliefs in society, few studies have examined how a society’s gendered
expectations can shape and constrain the development of a new logic. To address this gap, I
focus on the first American movement for bird conservation from 1889 to 1920 and the
movement participants’ responses to women’s institutional entrepreneurship. Specifically, I
investigate a mechanism that is responsible for the slow expansion of the new logic and that
perpetuates gender inequality throughout the bird conservation movement: deviance
neutralization. This is an individual strategy to counteract perceived deviance from gender
norms by living up to society’s gendered expectations. When female participants introduce a
new technology-based practice and hold leadership positions that enable them to further the
movement, movement participants see the women’s entrepreneurial action as deviance from
generally expected feminine qualities. To neutralize such deviance, movement participants are
less likely to promote what these women campaign for, environmentalism. I test this
mechanism using an event count analysis of individual contributions, by article count, to the
movement’s bimonthly magazine that shared the movement’s vision with the public. I find
that the more women implemented a new practice and the more women occupied official
positions, the fewer contributions participants were likely to make to the magazine. The
findings of this study extend current understanding of institutional entrepreneurship using the
lens of gender, and the mechanism of gender inequality in even progressive movements. They
also have practical implications for addressing deviance neutralization today.