Gender and Politics Research and the Challenges of Our Times

The concepts and approaches of gender and politics research are crucial to understand the multiple yet intertwined challenges of our times. Authoritarianism and radical-right populism, threats to democracy and rule of law, militarisation and securitisation, closing borders and new forms of ethnonationalism, increasing political violence, dismantling welfare states, and the climate crisis are all gendered and racialised phenomena. On the one hand, the logics, rationales, material structures and political processes and institutions that underpin these phenomena are based on gendered and racialised inequalities. On the other hand, these phenomena are likely to exacerbate these inequalities, weaken feminist, queer and racialised communities and shape their activism, and undermine equality commitments and gender equality and anti-discrimination policies. Gender and politics scholars help to unpack these phenomena, among other things, through providing understandings of political institutions as gendered in their formal and informal norms and practices; through mobilising the concept of intersectionality to understand how different oppressions intersect and how new solidarities can be crafted; through assessing the gendered nature of economic, climate, and defence and security policies and the knowledge that underpins them; and through pointing out how the attack on gender equality and LGBTIQ rights is at the hearth of the attack on democracy. Against this background, this section aims to provide a platform for a broad range of research that takes a gender or intersectional perspective to the challenges of our times. It seeks to shed light on the gendered, racialised and class-based dimensions of the current challenges. It also wants to identify avenues for resistance and transformation - whether within social movements or political institutions. The section offers a place to discuss the power of gender and politics concepts and approaches, and to build bridges between gender and politics scholars and mainstream political science scholars interested in the innovations of gender and politics research. This section invites panel proposals as well as individual paper proposals, which address theoretical, methodological, and empirical questions. The empirical contexts of the papers can range from local to national and supranational levels, and from Europe to global South. Panels to be proposed or to be collated from individual papers can potentially address the following themes, but do not need to be limited to them: 1) Changes in gender equality and anti-discrimination policies at local, national and supranational level; 2) Opposition and resistance to gender and sexual equality; 3) Feminist and intersectional activism and advocacy aiming to address the challenges of our times; 4) Gender dimensions of radical right populism and authoritarianism, including representation, practices and policies; 5) Political institutions as gendered, with emphasis on formal and informal practices and policy; making processes in policy fields that are critical for tackling the challenges of our times; 6) Critical analyses of climate, migration and defence and security policies from a gender and intersectional perspective; 7) The role of gender equality, LGBTIQ rights and anti racism for democracy, and feminist practices as democratic innovations; 8) Recent conceptual and methodological innovations in gender and politics research 9) The gendered politics of the European Union in turbulent times 10) Feminist political economy, care, social reproduction