These two books examine organizations that pursue “women's” rights and “human” rights in international and national arenas. Jutta Joachim focuses primarily on international feminist activism in regional and “universal” international organizations; Michelle Bonner examines women's participation in human rights organizations in Argentina, with a small coda devoted to Chilean human rights organizations. Both show interrelationships between institutions, events, and personalities supporting and opposing female activism. Both also emphasize the connection between the ways in which issues are framed and the shape of the political space within which rights can be pursued. And from different angles, each also indicates situations where national, regional, and international activism strengthen one another.

Joachim is interested in how women's issues get on the international agenda, and how they fare in the process. From the naive assumptions of the mostly middle- and upper-class activists who organized the first International Women's Congress in The Hague during World War I—everyone wants world peace, yes?—to the sophisticated strategies of the highly diverse participants in the women's conferences held during and after the United Nations Decade for Women (1975–85), advocates of women's human rights honed their skills at getting their issues on the agendas of international institutions likely to further their aims. Success depended on favorable political opportunity structures, and the ability of activist nongovernmental organizations to mobilize constituencies to support their efforts.

Joachim analyzes a series of activist movements systematically through a template comparing the opportunity and mobilizing structures they found and made. With regard to opportunity structures, she nominates access, allies, and alignments as key variables. Political opportunity structures are fluid. They reward activists who can frame their issues to coincide with the international organization's own imperatives, and find influential allies able to offer endorsements or sponsorship, as well as money for the conferences that enable activists to define specific goals and mobilize allies to support them. Activists also must be alert to take advantage of organizational and world historical shifts in political alignments favorable to their positions—a more sympathetic ear in a critical place inside the target organization, a new book that foregrounds their issues, and seismic shifts like the end of the Cold War. Mobilizing structures include organizational entrepreneurs with the resources, talent, and charisma to lead international campaigns; a heterogeneous constituency able both to undermine “special-interest” accusations and, by its inclusion of radicals, to enlarge the space within which to construct a “moderate” position that advances movement goals; and experts to provide independent validation of the activists' analyses and proposals. Throughout, activists must frame issues in ways that make the problems they elucidate and the solutions they suggest legible, plausible, and acceptable to the multiple audiences they seek to persuade.

Bonner places frames at the center of her analysis of women in human rights organizations in Argentina. Legitimacy is the key to the survival and efficacy of these organizations in a country long ruled by the parallel, mutually supportive hierarchies of state and church. Even during periodic resumptions of electoral democracy in Argentina, the persistence of human rights organizations remains a constant challenge to whatever regime is in control. Their very existence is a tacit message of dissent, while their questioning and protests of arrangements enabling suppression and denial of past human rights violations (for example, through amnesty agreements or the “theory of the two demons,” which argues that the dirty war was really a civil war in which both sides were equally culpable), brings them into direct confrontation with hostile governments.

In Argentina, women are simultaneously constrained and protected by frames of discourse that ascribe political roles to mothers as representatives of the family. Bonner defines framing as “the establishment of a vocabulary that summarizes an agreed-upon meaning for actions, events, or experiences” (p. 8). Although frames are fluid, their effectiveness in making women's claims legitimate depends on how well activists can evoke tradition as well as objective evidence in making them. At the same time, state agents and social forces also struggle to control meaning and determine the location of the red lines separating legitimate from illegitimate demands and actions.

The incorporation of women into nationalist frames has historically emphasized their role as “representatives of the family, defenders of public morality, and defenders of the nation-as-family” (p. 26). Even as Argentine politics has followed a course where promises of representation and rights are routinely violated with impunity, the frame around women as representatives of the family is less susceptible to violation—but not entirely so. During the dirty war (1976–83), young Argentine activists were arrested, tortured, and murdered, and their babies and small children abducted by the military rulers. In protest, the mothers of the missing met regularly in the Plaza de Mayo. Carrying photographs of their children, they were a constant reproach to the regime which could not legitimately detain them for seeking to protect their children.

Afterward, however, the human rights organizations that grew out of these protests (called “affected” groups) enjoyed different levels of protection, depending on how they located their demands in the frame of “family.” The two branches of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and, to a lesser extent, the two branches of Children of the Disappeared are more marginalized politically than the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo. The reasons are reflected visually in the order of march when the groups demonstrate together. The Mothers walk in front; a gap represents the disappeared; last come the Children who escaped sequestration. The Mothers are particularly obnoxious to the regime because, even though they have given up their dream that their children will ever be released alive, their wounds have not healed and they have not given up the political ideals and goals of the missing. The Grandmothers occupy a different space because, following the transition to democracy, they have concentrated on finding the grandchildren stolen by the managers of the dirty war, and they sometimes work with the government to do this. How closely to align with the state is one dimension of difference that has led to splits in some of the “affected” human rights groups. Bonner also looks at how human rights groups have been able to expand their concerns to social rights through a careful enlargement of the frame of family protection.

The anchor of both books in framing theory foregrounds the creation and expansion of common ground as a sine qua non for expanding human rights. Their discussions of media occur in the context of frames and how media interests often disrupt them and undermine activist efforts. In the international arena, media tend to pander to popular images of women and their roles. They look for “cat fights,” report in the language of stereotypes, and thereby get away with superficial coverage of complex political situations. Actor intervention is required to move beyond stereotypes and commonplaces, everything from media kits and press conferences to the cultivation of reporters sympathetic to the objectives of activists. As Joachim shows, NGOs that devote attention to media relations can head off, if not completely eliminate, frame-shattering coverage. Nationally, Bonner demonstrates how media operate in an environment that encourages some degree of self-censorship, especially where governments are relatively unrestrained with regard to punitive actions against views that diverge from the “mainstream.” Media coverage of human rights organizations in Argentina is affected both by their message and by their connections with media actors and people in government. Uncontroversial and well-connected groups attract more unpaid coverage than the others.

The stories of the organizations described in these volumes are only part of what they have to offer. Joachim also explores how regional organizations like the European Union and leadership from individual states can enhance NGO chances of breaking onto the agenda of the United Nations. Her evaluation of the strategic choices confronting activists in particular situations has theoretical and practical applications beyond these bounds. Bonner's comparison of human rights organizations in Argentina and Chile is heartbreaking in its depiction of the limits that history imposes on the present, especially on outcomes of democratization in the short-to-medium term. In Argentina, democracy is defined less by the rule of law than by whether or not elections are held. The periods between military regimes preserve social and political hierarchies, if under a populist aegis. As Bonner's comparison with Chile shows, autonomous civil society organizations are crucial to democratic life, and democratic and authoritarian regimes in Argentina have discouraged their development. Even human rights organizations bear the traces of traditional hierarchies with only one “nonaffected” group ever having elected female presidents.

Both of these books have much to offer students of civil society and gender. To me, the best academic writings have as much to say between the lines as on them. If you share this prejudice, you will find a lot to like in these careful examinations of organizations devoted to the empowerment of women and the expansion of human rights.