The Ambivalence of the Ordinary: The Polish Women’s Strike (OSK) and the Women’s March 8th Alliance (PK8M) in a Comparative Perspective

The chapter presents outcomes of a comparative, qualitative, and quantitative study on coordinators of the Polish Women’s Strike (OSK) and activists of the Warsaw-based feminist Women’s March 8th Alliance (PK8M). The massive countrywide Women’s Strike on October 3, 2016, expressing a popular disagreement over attempts to further restrict Polish abortion legislation, was widely recognized as the voice of “the people.” It was described as a protest of “ordinary women” (zwykłe kobiety), who within right-wing discourses are contrasted with feminists. Referring to those juxtapositions, we asked actors from both groups under study (“ordinary women” from OSK and “feminists” from PK8M) about their understanding of the term “ordinary women,” their opinions on abortion legislation, and their previous and current sociopolitical activity. Contrary to PK8M, most of OSK activists consider their protests to be those of “ordinary women,” although their personal understanding of the term does not align with right-wing interpretations. The outcome of this comparison served as a basis to reflect upon the ambivalence of the term “ordinary women” and “ordinariness” (zwykłość). We contrasted representations of ordinariness, and populist elite—the people dichotomies with statistical averages, and applied a center-periphery analysis in order to discuss the ways ordinariness is deployed by various political actors in Poland.