Gender, exclusionary democracies, and de-democratization: a theoretical approach rooted in Latin America and Eastern Europe

Crisis, retreat, and backsliding are some of the terms used to frame processes that weaken democracies and can lead to autocratization. In recent debates, the focus has often been on institutional changes, cultural reactions against liberal values, and the rise of populist and far-right leaders. In parallel, the threats posed to women’s rights in different countries have been defined as a backlash, leading the gaze to setbacks. This paper proposes a shift in focus, as it intends to contribute to the analysis of these processes in exclusionary contemporary democracies. This could contribute to the debate as it highlights the differences between previous processes of democratic consolidation and brings inequalities and limited citizenship to the core of the theoretical analysis of the connections between gender backlash and democratic backsliding. To do that, we root the theoretical debate in exclusionary contemporary democracies in Latin America and Eastern Europe, where anti-gender movements have been particularly loud and effective in promoting their agenda and blocking feminist influence. The explanation for this relative success may be in the roots they have in the limited “democraticness of the state” and low-intensity citizenship due to “violations of the law at the social level” (O’Donnel, 2007, p. 128). In these regions, democratization processes were locked in “a perverse confluence of two distinct political projects” (Dagnino, 2007, p. 102). On the one hand, processes of democratization allowed for the increasing involvement of civil society in discussion and decision making about public policy, but on the other hand, the implementation of neoliberalism resulted in a reduced, minimal state that aims to transfer social responsibilities to private actors and hardly implemented policies to deal with inequalities. There are differences, of course. One of them is that Latin America historically witnessed strong and visible feminist activism that played a relevant role in democratization processes, whilst in Eastern Europe, the place and role of feminist civil society are much weaker and often developed as a subsumed part of the state. Despite that, anti-gender movements gained momentum with the rise of right-wing populist and far-right leaders, contributing to mobilizing popular sectors in their support. We propose that a comparison of the gendered nature of current contestations over democracy in two regions may deepen our understanding of the underlying conditions that hamper and threaten gender equal democracy developing in these contexts.