Gendering Autocracies and Democratic Backsliding

Abstract

Democratic backsliding is a pervasive global phenomenon, that has been widely documented and meticulously traced since 2005. In parallel, currently 80 percent of the total world population lives in non-democratic regimes. As the optimism over undeniability of democratic proliferation dissipated at the end of the 20th Century, scholars devote much of their attention to fleshing out (pre)conditions for autocracies’ survival and democracies’ decline. Whereas these can take on numerous forms, attacks on and deterioration of representative political institutions, electoral processes, civil society, media, and human/women’s rights are at the fore. The papers in this panel research gendered aspects of these processes comparatively or as case studies of autocratic and flawed democracies alike. Specifically, issues of violence against women in politics (both in electoral processes and more broadly in feminist political engagement); far-right and left-right strategies to suppress women’s rights and women’s personal experiences in such circumstances; and finally, how women’s rights and gender equality is instrumentalized to legitimize autocracies.