Between resilience and innovation. Feminist movements advancing democracy amid backsliding

This paper explores the responses of feminist movements to the rise of anti-gender politics in Italy as forms of democratic resilience and innovation. While the literature on gender and democratic backsliding mostly focuses on resistances to conservative attempts to remove rights or shape policy at the institutional level (Kantola et al. 2024), this paper draws attention to social movement actors and contentious politics. In particular, the study seeks to conceptually bridge the notions of democratic resilience and democratic innovation to understand the inherent potential of feminist actors to act as a democratic stronghold, resisting the erosion of gender equality rights and the decline in the quality of democracy. The rise of populist radical right parties (PRRP) in Europe, coupled with the growth of anti-gender movements, has been pivotal in the process of de-democratization, positioning gender equality at the heart of an intensely polarized landscape. However, the literature has largely overlooked the relevance of feminist responses to anti-gender politics in defending and expanding democracy. Only recently have scholars emphasized the need to consider gender in the analysis of democratic resilience (Chiva 2023). Scholars have also developed the notion of democratic innovations, as novel practices that aim to improve the quality of democracy, by increasing citizen participation, enhancing accountability, and promoting greater inclusion (Caravantes & Lombardo 2023). However, the link between democratic resilience and innovation is still underdeveloped. Italy provides a particularly salient case for examining the organized opposition to gender equality, where anti-genderism has become a mainstream ideal, and feminist responses to it. While initially focused on grassroots mobilization, anti-gender actors have increasingly gained influence in the country’s parliamentary politics, strengthened by alliances with PRRP such as the League and Brothers of Italy (Lavizzari 2024). The institutionalization of anti-gender activism has, in turn, spurred the contraction of reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, kinship structures, sexual morality, education, and gender equality. The country has also seen a resurgence of a robust feminist movement since 2016 (Barone & Bonu 2022). Catalyzed by the new transnational feminist wave, the movement has focused on targeting structural gender based violence, resisting attacks on gender equality, and countering the ongoing conservative backlash. This study aims thus to investigate the strategies adopted by the feminist movement in Italy to counter anti-gender attacks, as forms of gendered democratic resilience and innovation. We argue that these two concepts should be kept together when analyzing feminist strategies, as the Italian case demonstrates that resilient practices are continually innovating the ways in which feminist movements respond to structural challenges and socio-political changes. By maintaining a dynamic interplay between resilience and innovation, these strategies not only adapt to evolving circumstances but also proactively change the field in which they take place. Our approach underscores the importance of connecting the ability to endure and transform with the creativity needed to envision and implement progressive change. Drawing from 20 interviews with feminist activists in Italy, we focus on three fields in which the grassroots actions of feminist activists have been especially relevant: health, violence and education.