Turning Words into Action? When Attacks against Gender Equality Matter

Political parties have increasingly included gender equality in their political priorities and governments across Europe have paid increasing attention to gender equality issues across a variety of policy domains. While tangible progress has been made toward the realization of equality, opposition to equality has also dramatically expanded. This increased political attention has resulted in a contrasted set of policy responses. First, the tempo of policy adoption tends to vary greatly both across countries and across policy domains. Second, the extent to which policies are gendered and de-gendered also greatly varies. Classic gender issues such as reproductive rights have been reactivated across Europe through a growing number of attacks. At the same time, attacks increasingly focus on new issues such as transgender+ rights. This paper proposes to analyse the dynamics in attention toward gender+ equality issues across space, time, and institutional venues. It investigates the appearance of the pro/anti equality issues on the institutional agendas, the actors involved and the strategies/counterstrategies, the combination with other issues, and their travelling across venues, space, and time and examines the determinants for successful strategies and counter-strategies to promote gender+ equality across political institutions. Drawing on the systematic analysis of policy attention (party manifestos, cabinet speeches) and action (laws, parliamentary questions, and constitutional court cases) across Western Europe (Austria, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and the UK) and Central Eastern Europe (Hungary and Poland). We contend a large part of the answer lies in the political attention and competition process and how policy action is negotiated, adjusted, or even radically shifted from words to deeds.