A Thread of Hope: Gender Resistance amidst Democratic Decline in Global South Countries

Abstract

This panel examines the interaction between gender politics, violence, and democratic erosion through rich empirical studies from the Global South and non-Anglo-Saxon contexts. Drawing on case studies from Malaysia, India, Afghanistan, and Indonesia, the panel seeks to decentre dominant narratives in the scholarship of gender and democracy and propose alternative ways to understand gender politics under restraining political environments. It asks how women’s and gender movements in respective contexts negotiate their strategies and influence amid deepening authoritarianism, enduring colonial legacies, and entrenched socially conservative religious norms. The discussion challenges the assumption that democratic decline only undermines gender rights by showing how repressive environments create avenues for resistance and political possibilities. It begins by critically examining what constitutes ‘women’s movements.’ In this paper, Nur Adilla from Waseda University urges us to look beyond the conventional typology of women’s movements. Using Malaysia as a case study, she argues that women have long been involved in, and increasingly lead, broader non-gender-based social movements. Therefore, this warrants a revival on how the current feminist scholarship—largely structured by colonial legacies and experiences in the Global North—views women in movements. The colonial legacy is another central theme proposed in the second paper. Here, Sameera Chauhan from ANU investigates how structural violence, legal precarity, and social stigma surrounding commercial sex work (CSM) and the regulations continue affecting their lives and livelihoods. The paper argues that despite the ostensible legality of sex work in India, the persistence of colonial-era legal frameworks has entrenched a regime of surveillance, criminalisation, and moral regulation that disproportionately targets sex workers. Nevertheless, it also illuminates CSM’s strategies of resistance, community formation, and self-articulation. The third paper onwards focuses on gender resistance in contemporary politics. Firstly, Aryana Mohmood from The ANU focuses on the post-2021 Afghan women’s movements to demonstrate democratic practice from below, through an everyday political ethic. She argues Afghan women’s resistance creates micro-democracies to reassert accountability, justice, and care. The paper situates Afghan women’s activism within a broader history of external intervention and complicit governance, tracing how these conditions constrain and enable resistance through formal activism and affective practices. The fourth paper by Prasakti Ramadhana (Dana) Fahadi from the University of Melbourne investigates Indonesian women’s digital resistance amidst increasing state violence over land conflicts. By linking ecofeminist resistance with digital activism, this research places gender-based violence as a symptom of democratic erosion. The digital interventions illustrate how feminist and community-led media reclaim civic space and reassert democratic ethics through care, solidarity, and the insistence that justice must include both people and the environment. Finally, we invite the audience to reflect on the broader theoretical question: Does democratic regression always have detrimental effects on women’s and gender rights? Here, Dyah Ayu Kartika (Kathy) from ANU shows a paradox from Indonesia’s democratic backsliding, where women’s movements managed to achieve some level of policy gains, while the anti-gender Islamists lack political wins. The paper argues that democratic decline has divergent impacts on gender-related advocacy.

Title	Details
Beyond the Waves: A Typology of Women’s Movements in Malaysia	View Paper Details
Continuities of Control: Colonial Legacies and the Contemporary Regulation of Commercial Sex Work in India	View Paper Details
Afghan women’s resistance amidst democratic erosion and authoritarian governance	View Paper Details
Against Extraction, Against Erosion: Women’s Digital Resistance to State Violence in Indonesia	View Paper Details
Restraint and Resistance: Gender Politics in Indonesia’s Democratic Backsliding	View Paper Details