Changing Institutions – Changing Opportunities for Gender Policies and Politics?

Abstract

For many decades, regional as well as international organizations like the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) were important institutional reference points for feminist mobilization. Feminists were able to carve out institutional spaces and to promote gender equality policies at international, regional and national levels. However, in the course of multiple crises (i.e. economic, financial and humanitarian crises), conservative and nationalist forces have gained momentum and have put the political legitimacy of regional and international institutions under question. Moreover, internationally accepted norms of gender equality are massively under attack or sidelined e.g. equal employment in the EU. Due to this backlash many feminists have questioned the gains of a 5th UN World Women’s Conference – ultimately the conference did not take place. Simultaneously, the EU is undergoing an institutional crisis which weakens its ability to promote gender equality policies. What do these developments entail for feminist mobilizing and gender equality policies at regional and international levels? How do feminist actors – both so-called femocrats as well as feminists from women’s movements and transnational women’s organizations – react to and cope with these institutional crises? Are there any new forms of feminist mobilization, like for instance transregional co-operation?

Title	Details
Masculinist Agency and the politics of the European Debt Crisis: The Gendered Political Economy of Restructuring	View Paper Details
Travelling notions of gender (in)equality in populist radical right discourse	View Paper Details
A Blind Spot? News Sources, Gender and Minority in Danish TV News	View Paper Details
'We are political soldiers willing to die for our party': Women, gender and political agency in the Greek Golden Dawn	View Paper Details