Gender Based Violence and De-Democratization.

This paper aims to conceptualize and empirically demonstrate how anti-gender and anti-democratic politics create and reinforce gender based violent practices and pathways to gender violence. While we want to understand how in the context of anti-gender politics violent practices spread, we also delve into how the anti-gender context prominently contributes to the conditions that make violence occur, remain unpunished and be acceptable.  Conceptually we differentiate between violent practices and pathways to violence. We define violent practices in the context of anti-gender politics as the use of emotional, social, economic, physical, or sexual harm—whether in public or private spaces—with the aim of maintaining or reinforcing gendered power hierarchies, gender norms and establish an exclusionary political order. Next to violence in formal institutional settings, targeting political adversaries or competitors, we look at other spheres, where individuals and groups including civil society, media, academics, as well as ordinary people who challenge the misogynistic and homophobic agenda of anti-gender politics are targeted. We also identify various pathways to violence facilitated by anti-gender politics. Pathways to violence in the context of this paper refers to factors that facilitate and/or structure the path to violence. The two main pathways to violence that we identify are: anti-gender discourses that legitimate violence, and the decreasing responsiveness of policy regimes that regulate violence. Building on the comparative analysis of data from 6 EU countries we demonstrate how anti-gender politics contributes to increased levels of gender violence. We show how this will vary depending on the institutionalization of anti-gender politics and levels of democratic erosion.