Unwrapping the illiberal Zeitgeist: gender and the rule of law in post-communist Europe

Over the last decade, an extensive literature has chronicled diffused illiberal trends across post-communist Europe. From different angles of research, scholars have identified an increasingly tense relationship between politics and law. Building on this wide literature, this paper adopts a niche perspective and discusses the interaction between backsliding and anti-gender equality mobilization. More specifically, the analysis uses the lenses of the mobilization against gender equality to identify the origins and the stages in the involution of inclusive democracies across post-communism. More specifically, the paper considers the anti-gendered dimensions of rule of law discourses and practices as a form of retrogressive mobilization (Norocel and Baluta 2021) and aims to inquire into how anti-gendered topics have become mainstream in the politics of postcommunist democracies to the point that one can even speak of an anti-gender Zeitgeist. In doing so, the analysis focuses on the context in which several referendums that defended the “traditional family” were organised and reproduced across the area.