The regulation of pornography in Europe has undergone encompassing changes over the past 50 years leading to more permissive regulatory regimes. This liberalization process provoked fierce opposition not only by religious groups opposing pornography on moral grounds, but also by feminist organizations rejecting pornography at least in its preponderant form which is mainly produced for male customers and represents women as inferior to men (Gruen 2005). From this point of view pornography is perceived as a source of violence against women by creating an environment that makes such violence acceptable and thereby induces men to commit crimes. Thus, it is typically argued that stronger political empowerment of women should lead to stricter regulation of pornography as women and female parliamentarians are more likely to demand stricter laws against pornography than their male counterparts (Sharp 2003: 266).
However, little do we know how these interests are translated into the political process. Do women use inter- and supranational or rather domestic political arenas to articulate their interests? Do they use parliamentary or rather “extra-parliamentary” channels to pursue their goals? And finally, are their attempts successful? Does stronger political empowerment of women lead to a stricter regulation of pornography and stricter sanctions in case of violations of existing rules?
To answer these research questions, a new data set about the regulation of pornography in Europe is being used which allows us to assess the strictness of pornography regulation in a sample of 19 European countries and to test hypotheses about the role of female empowerment and EU policies as a barrier to pornography liberalization
