When opposition to gender+ equality and LGBTQIA+ policies is growing both in Europe and around the world, with increasing attacks on gender and sexuality norms and violations of women's and minority groups' rights, it is crucial to further improve the feminist scholarly understanding of opposition to gender equality in times of de-democratization. The Gendered Politics of Crises and De-Democratization: Opposition to Gender Equality seeks to broaden the current scope of literature on opposition to gender equality in democracy, laws, politics, and policymaking procedures. This book focuses on nine case studies of opposition to gender+ equality politics and policies at the United Nations' (UN) multilateral level, the European Union's (EU) supranational level, national, and local levels. With its strong interdisciplinary and original focus on bringing together distinct scholarships as well as the variety of topics covered-from employment through sexual and reproductive health rights to gender-based violence-, this book is beneficial not only for gender studies students and scholars but also for feminist activists, political and policy actors, and anyone who is interested in achieving social justice.
There are two key strengths of the edited volume that merit highlighting. On the one hand, the edited volume is thematically cohesive, very approachable, and greatly contributes to a better in-depth understanding of the contestation around gender equality. On the other hand, the selection of cases presents an interesting mix of relatively well-known cases such as Poland and Hungary, but also less studied cases such as Lithuania and the EU itself. Hence, the chapters strongly complement each other and clearly demonstrate that opposition to gender equality is not a phenomenon of a few countries, but a European-wide issue...
[This book] is a great contribution to the current scholarly and public debate on the contestation of gender equality, outlining its various forms and consequences for European societies. -- Stefan Wallaschek, 'European Political Science'
In The Gendered Politics of Crisis and De-Democratization, Bianka Vida and her coauthors offer an interdisciplinary analysis of the recent rise of opposition against gender+ and LGBTQIA equality in the multilevel space of the European Union (EU) (and Turkey) [...] this book advances such scholarship in important ways: first, by broadening its focus in order to locate current opposition against gender+ and LGBTQIA+ equality within the context of the specifically gendered effects of current de-democratization processes and the 2008 economic crisis, crucially, as these intersect with the role of the EU as a gendered normative power; and second, by deepening that focus to assess the effects of opposition in terms of policy reversals and changes in prevailing gender regimes at both the EU and national levels, as well as feminist responses to these. -- Lucrecia Rubio Grundell, 'Politics and Gender'
Bianka Vida is a doctoral candidate in politics at the University of Surrey, Guildford. She holds an MA in critical gender studies with a specialization in public policy from Central European University (CEU), Budapest. Her main research interests are the EU’s discursive politics of gender equality, gender and populism, and European gender equality and social inclusion policies. In addition to working as an independent researcher and gender policy consultant, she also frequently publishes articles to contribute to public and academic discussions on gender equality policies and politics more broadly.
Elisa Bellè is a Marie Curie Fellow at Sciences Po, France. She holds a PhD in sociology and social research from the University of Trento, Italy. Her research interests include the ethnographic study of political organizations, populist radical-right activism, gender/masculinity and politics.
Alessia Donà is associate professor of political science at the University of Trento, Italy, where she teaches international relations and human rights and gender issues in political and social research. Her research interests comprise gender politics and policymaking, human rights and LGBT+ issues as well as gender and global governance.
Senem Ertan is associate professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, the Social Sciences University of Ankara, Turkey. She holds a PhD in political science —comparative and European politics — from the University of Siena, Italy, and an MA in global political economy from the University of Kassel, Germany. She has published articles on gender politics and comparative politics in politics and gender, social indicators research and global society and book chapters on gender studies with Palgrave Macmillan and Cambridge Scholars Publishing, among others. Her recent research interests include gender policies, politics of age of marriage, women’s NGOs, and comparative politics.
Ginger Feather has a PhD in political science and MA degrees in Arabic/Islamic studies and international affairs. Her primary research focuses on feminist associational activism in North Africa with extensive fieldwork in Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt. She has published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes with her first solo book project, titled Torn between Bad Choices: Moroccan and Tunisian Women’s Battle against Discrimination and Violence.
Barbara Gaweda is a postdoctoral researcher in the research project “Gender, Party Politics and Democracy in Europe: A Study of European Parliament’s Party Groups” (EUGenDem), based at Tampere University, Finland, and funded by the European Research Council Consolidator Grant. Prior to that, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Social Research (IASR) at Tampere University. She obtained her PhD in political science from the University of Edinburgh. She specializes in gender politics, social rights in Europe, and anti-equality discourses in Central-Eastern Europe.
Judith Goetz holds degrees in comparative literature and political science and is currently pursuing a PhD at the Center for Teacher’s Education at the University of Vienna. Her research interests focus on right-wing extremism and women/gender and anti-feminism. She has recently co-edited the anthologies Untergangster des Abendlandes: Ideology and Reception of the Right-Wing Extreme ‘Identitarians’ (2017) and Right-Wing Extremism Volume 3: Gender-Reflected Perspectives (2019).
Anikó Gregor is senior lecturer at Eötvös Lóránd University (ELTE), Budapest, where, besides her teaching responsibilities, she is a program coordinator for the gender studies MA program. In her research, she focuses on the connections between gender inequalities and neoliberalism, especially from a Central-Eastern European perspective. She was also a research fellow at Freie Universitat, Berlin.
Akaysha Humniski is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University. She holds a BA from the University of Winnipeg and an MA from York University. Her specialized subfields are comparative politics and gender and diversity studies. Her research focuses on feminist institutionalism, social policy, political myth-making, and the politics of the European Union.
Stefanie Mayer is a political scientist. She completed her PhD on White feminist movements, (anti)racism and ethnicization. She is currently a researcher and lecturer at FH Campus Wien/University of Applied Sciences. She has worked on research projects in various institutions and teaches at the universities of Vienna and Klagenfurt/Celovec.
Martijn Mos is assistant professor of international relations at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He holds a PhD and MA in government from Cornell University, an MPhil in European politics and society from the University of Oxford, and an MA in global studies from the University of Vienna. His research examines the contestation of international norms with a particular focus on LGBTI rights in the European Union.
