Viewers around the world watched via live feed as police dispersed and arrested hundreds of people protesting peacefully in lower Manhattan. A flank of police in riot gear surrounded the camp of remaining protesters in Zuccotti Park.

As police encircled the huddled protesters to make their final arrests, a woman turned to the camera and, with grit and composure, implored viewers to support the Occupy Wall Street movement.

After Occupy Wall Street began in New York in September, the movement quickly spread to over 1,500 cities, attracting hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets to protest economic inequality and government corruption. When police forced occupiers in Canada and the U.S. to leave their sites in November using pepper spray and dragging women by their hair, the protesters only grew stronger in their resolve.

While the Occupy Wall Street movement has been criticized for not having clear goals, it has been powerful enough to bring together people of different ages, backgrounds and political affiliations in relative harmony. And that is something to celebrate.

There is, after all, a tendency for movements on the left to splinter into separate groups and lose momentum, but this hasn’t happened so much with Occupy Wall Street. As a participant and a media outreach volunteer for SlutWalk marches, I saw how the SlutWalk movement divided feminists. Even though most feminists agreed with the goal of ending victim-blaming, I found it disheartening that many critics who disagreed with reclaiming the word “slut,” or who criticized SlutWalk’s racial and class privilege, did not decide to join the movement to change it from within.

I have seen something different within the Occupy Wall Street movement. Many feminists have had criticisms, but this has not kept them from playing active roles within the movement.

And despite the mocking media coverage of protestors as lazy hippies and disgruntled youth, many people have recognized the key issues occupiers are fighting against: extreme economic inequality and the lack of accountability that comes with the top one percent of the wealthiest people in society wielding too much economic and political power.

Since I’m spending much of my time in New York City, I went to talk to the protesters at Zuccotti Park. I saw roughly as many women as men, and many of the women I met were active members of subgroups such as the people of colour working group and the safer-space caucus. I also saw socialists, libertarians, religious leaders, veterans, seniors, children and queer and transgender people—a picture of the diversity that is usually absent in mainstream media depictions of the protesters.

Is there sexism in the Occupy Wall Street movement?

Yes there is, and that’s partly because of the fact that sexism exists in all the places around the world where the Occupy movement has spread. Recently, there have been well-publicized complaints of sexual harassment and even reports of sexual assault at Occupy sites in Dallas, New York and Ottawa. Interestingly, while critics pounced on these incidents as a way to discredit the movement, many feminists ramped up their efforts to improve the movement from within. They have set up women-only tents, supported women in obtaining legal and counselling services and established safer space or anti-oppression caucuses. Women’s presence is further seen in groups like Code Pink and the website, OccupyPatriarchy.org, whose members are trying to empower female occupiers to network and work together to improve safety and feminist consciousness within the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Feminists involved in the Occupy movement are also raising awareness that women and minorities suffer disproportionately from economic inequalities. Women make considerably less money than men working the same jobs with women of colour being paid even less; women are also much more likely to do unpaid work such as child care and elder care and to be single parents.

Movements with as much momentum and widespread support as Occupy Wall Street are hard to come by. For all of these reasons and many more, women and minorities worldwide need to become more involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

This is a teachable moment for all progressive activists. Rather than lobbing criticisms from the sidelines, we should increase our involvement and educate and engage others. Only by doing so can we make sure women’s voices are heard.

-PUblished in the Winter 2012 issue of Herizons.