The Contestation of Gender and Sexuality in International Organizations

The workshop suggests that anti-gender actors see international organizations as both a threat and opportunity: although the embrace of gender equality and LGBTI rights by IOs threatens their core values, these actors simultaneously treat IOs as an opportunity structure for counteracting the threat. Accordingly, the workshop contributions are expected to touch on at least one of the dimensions of threat and opportunity. The workshop aims to capture variation in how these threats and opportunities manifest themselves. In particular, the workshop explores four types of variation. First, we welcome papers that touch on the contestation of various issues related to gender equality and LGBTI rights. Among others, suitable topics include sexual and reproductive health and rights; the recognition of gender reassignment and self-identification; gender mainstreaming; same-sex unions; and anti-discrimination initiatives, including hate crime and hate speech. The workshop also aims to address different types of actors who contest gender norms, ranging from government representatives and the state-based groups in which they are active to faith-based NGOs and from conservative media outlets to grassroots movements. Third, the workshop will examine the different tactics that anti-gender actors employ. Examples include framing strategies, litigation, petitions, legislation, and the obstruction of negotiations. Lastly, our comparative perspective calls for papers on a range of international organizations. The organizers welcome papers on the European Union and the United Nations but particularly encourage contributions on organizations that have received comparatively little scholarly attention. Examples of the latter include the World Health Organization, the Council of Europe, and the Organization of American States. We invite papers that address the connection between anti-gender politics and international organizations from different disciplinary and methodological perspectives. The workshop should appeal especially to scholars of international norms, global governance and social movements, but we also welcome contributions from other disciplines, including sociology, international law, and comparative politics. The workshop aims to bring together early-career scholars, including doctoral students, and more senior researchers. We will disseminate the call for papers through personal and publicly available networks, including the ECPR Standing Group on Gender and Politics; the International Studies Association’s sections on Feminist Theory and Gender Studies, Human Rights, and Religion and International Relations; the sections on Women, Gender and Politics Research and Sexuality and Politics, as well as the LGBTQ Caucus, of the American Political Science Association; and the Gender and Sexuality Research Network of the Council for European Studies. The organizers intend to use the workshop as a springboard for two special issues in highly-ranked journals. The two special issues will reflect the structure of the workshop: they will respectively focus on international organizations as threats to and opportunities for anti-gender actors and their values. The proposals for these special issues are currently in the draft stage.