Ethnologia Polona, vol. 43: 2022, 83– 100 PL ISSN 0137 - 4079, DOI: 10.23858/ethp.2022.43.3005 WOMEN’S PROTESTS IN SMALL POLISH TOWNS1 MAGDALENA MUSZEL a , GRZEGORZ PIOTROWSKI b a INSTITUTE OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF GDAŃSK b INSTITUTE OF SOCIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF GDAŃSK Late 2020 witnessed one of the biggest cycles of protests in contemporary Poland that were sparked by the decision of the Constitutional Tribunal further restricting the abortion law. Tis cycle of contention was somewhat similar to of the protests organized in 2016 and later but stood out in terms of scale and geographic distribution. Te 2016 protests were surprising as they also emerged in Polish small and pro- vincial towns. Te scale of 2020’s protests in small towns belies the common assumption about the string conservatism of Poland and in particular Polish small towns and rural areas. Besides the scale, there are other surprising elements in these protests, one of them being the harsher and more direct language used during the protests and the generational composition of the protesting crowds. Our hypothesis is that these protests mark the emergence of a new generation of feminist activists, while the whole cycle of protests marks deeper changes in Polish society. Te inclusion of the Roman Catholic Church as one of the targets of the protests’ claims can be linked to the increasing secularization of the Polish society; the growing and observed intersectionality during women’s protests (i.e. inclusion of social claims, support for LGBT+ community, antifascism) points out to the changing nature of feminist activ- ism in Poland; and fnally the new language used during protests suggests a signifcant change in defning the protest arena s and a shift of scale from locality to the translocal reality of social media. KEYWORDS: Poland, feminism, social movement, protest, ethnography INTRODUCTION Te 2020 protests in Poland alerted the public to a new wave of feminist move- ment – a newly formed body of feminist organisations that began to articulate their demands in a new manner. Many commentators and observers have looked at how this wave of protests changed the emergent movement that frst began to appear after the 2016 Black Monday protest. Te focus of this article is the leaders and organizers of the 2016 and 2020 protests who staged their activities in small towns. In our study of small-town protests we aimed not only to highlight the diferent spatial setting in 1 Tis text is based on research conducted within a project entitled  Feminist activism in small towns/ Feministischer Aktivismus in Kleinstadten funded by the Polish-German Science Foundation (DPWS).