Doing Feminism in Times of Global Anti-Gender Mobilizations

Abstract

Anti-gender and anti-feminist actors in different parts of the world have, in recent decades, intensified their messages and organized their capacities to re-open debates about gender+ rights and equality, sexuality and reproductive rights in society. It is a diverse constellation of groups, organisations, movements, and individuals with different backgrounds, legacies, and drives who work and mobilize against the achievements of the Istanbul Convention, attempt to restrict access to abortion and LGBTQI+ rights and sexual education, contest same-sex unions and rights, and operate against initiatives promoting basic rights for transgender people and whose activities connect with far-right, ultra-conservative and white supremacist agendas. The multifaceted, transnational constellation of actors mobilizing against gender has been an eye-opener for scholars, activists, and feminists. There is a need to identify new theoretical, conceptual approaches and to provide sound empirical analyses that can rekindle strategic alliances, collective actions, and democratic responses to the diffusion and impact of anti-gender and anti-feminist discourses and policies, spreading contemporaneously across different environs and contexts. This implies the need to address the complexity of this global phenomenon by gathering scholars and activist researchers within different backgrounds, disciplinary interests, and empirical approaches to the study of anti-gender dynamics and the global far-right, but also with an interest to suggest viable strategies and responses to these challenges. This section wants to bridge different strands of research – social movement studies, party politics, public policy analysis – and create the premises of new conceptual and empirical insights as well as mutual learning when studying the global complexities of the anti-gender and anti-feminist phenomenon. In addition, it provides an opportunity to address and discuss together differences of opinions and new tactics that can strengthen collective strategies and support for targeted groups. Against this background, the panel invites papers focusing on: 1) Analysis of global anti-gender, anti-feminist, and misogynist mobilisations, their impact on public debates and institutions, policy processes, including links with populist radical right parties; 2) Anti-gender politics and the impact on equality, diversity, and legitimacy of critical knowledge within academia and activist milieux; 3) Doing feminism in times of anti-gender mobilizations, including responses at the movement and institutional levels, and among scholars and activists engaged with feminist knowledge and practice.

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