Activism at a Time of Backslide: Feminist and LGBTQ Responses to Opposition to Gender and Sexual Equality

The event is co-organized with the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology.

Gender and sexual equality norms are currently under attack across Europe and beyond. This new phenomenon demands targeted empirical and theoretical attention. While scholarship devotes some attention to activism and mobilization in the context of backsliding, more systematic and conceptually solid attention is needed to understand how backsliding is affecting social movements and feminist and LGBTQ activism.  

New movements have emerged that oppose gender equality, such as men’s or father’s rights movements, groups connected to radical right populist agendas, or to conservative religious groups. On the other side, feminist and LGBTQ responses and resilience to this wave of opposition to gender and sexual equality also deserve more systematic attention. Many women’s and LGBTQ rights movements which once operated in environments favorable to institutionalization and cooperation with governments now find themselves marginalized, excluded, de-funded and persecuted by states, and demonized by hostile publics and conservative civil society actors. Their responses vary, from turning to disruptive and grassroots-based strategies, to coalition-building with pro-democracy groups, or turning to the university as a site of resistance, while in other cases, some face abeyance, and even collapse.

This workshop aims to analyze these new patterns of mobilization and activism, and interactions between them. We ask how, when and where they reinforce each other, where and why one or the other prevails and dominates in the political arena?  

Agenda

Detailed agenda (Download)
Workshop participants (Download)