Turning Religion into Action: When Attacks against Gender Equality Matter in Europe

Opposition to equality+ initiatives has dramatically expanded into a pattern that displays key features of morality issues. Classic gender issues such as reproductive rights have been reactivated across Europe through a growing number of attacks. At the same time, attacks also increasingly focus on new issues such as transgender+ rights. Across Europe, far right parties have often been taking the lead in attacking gender+ equality while traditional religious parties have often stumbled in identifying a vote-seeking positioning compatible with their increasingly secularised ideology. The question arises to understand the impact of the revival of the secular-religious divide on these new political dynamics in morality issues. 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 gender+ equality across political institutions.