(Re)politisizing Gender Violence Across Europe: Frames, Actors and Outcomes in Times of Conservative Backlash

Abstract

In the 90s the transnational feminist movement succeeded in conceptualising gender violence as a violation of women's human rights grounded in unequal power relations between men and women. Another parallel achievement was the legitimization of gender equality as a public issue requiring state intervention. Since then, a cascade of measures against gender violence has been adopted by European states, recently culminating in the regional framework of the Istanbul Convention. This success story has nevertheless been criticised from feminist grounds for its technocratic depoliticizing management of gender issues, “policy without politics”, and for creating an illusion of equality while other on-going processes, like neoliberalism, were producing multiple gendered violences for different categories of women. Beyond feminist debates, in recent years conservative actors around the world are attacking equality policies with an unprecedented virulence and turning them into a battlefield of their “cultural war”. The ensuing scenario is complex. On one end of the political spectrum, constellations of actors articulated with nationalist far-right parties are undermining the unaccomplished process of delegitimization of gender violence, using the transnational lingua franca of “gender ideology”. In Europe, this opposition was articulated in some countries to block the ratification of the Istanbul Convention and in others it targets established national policies. To further complicate the analysis, nationalist far-right parties have also appropriated gender violence discourse, twisting it to fit their xenophobic aims by depicting migrant men as (national) women´s aggressors and rapists, while opposing existing gender violence policy. Where the far-right is in power, participation of feminist organizations is blocked, gender policy and institutions are dismantled or appropriated, and misogyny in public discourse is on the rise. On the other side of the political spectrum, a new cycle of global feminist protest cuts across Europe and displays an unprecedented capacity for mobilization in the streets. These movements renew the politicization of violence, with important displacements in its framing and repertoire of action with respect to previous human rights transnational feminism and state feminism. So the feminist field is also being repoliticised and reconfigured in this context of backlash and anti-violence feminist activism is back. Many issues arise in this new context: Is this questioning of gender violence policy an opportunity to re-politicize and therefore reinvigorate feminism and its allies by doing "policy with politics"? Or does this politicization, on the contrary, prepare the ground for a de-conceptualization and re-legitimization of gender violence and, therefore, for dismantling gender violence policy and feminism along with it? What are, so far, the outcomes of this process in terms of reframing, alignment of actors, institutional arrangements and public policy on gender violence? In this panel we welcome papers dealing with the recent contestation and (re)politicization of gender violence in the context of the conservative backlash across Europe and beyond, looking forward to joint research and publication on this matter.

Title	Details
Gendering Moscow: How to Minimize Urban Risks for Females?	View Paper Details
Keeping Out the Trojan Horse: Re-Politicizing Gender in the Context of the Istanbul Convention	View Paper Details
Ready, Set, Pull Back? European Backsliding Gender Policies During ‘Constructing Dialogues’ with the CEDAW Committee	View Paper Details
Understanding and Fighting Forced Conjugalities: an Opportunity to Bring Together Feminist, LGBTQI+ and Anti-Racist Agendas	View Paper Details
Gender Violence in the Hurricane´s Eye: From Margin to Centre	View Paper Details