Operating in an illiberal autocratizing context, the Hungarian Parliament defies procedural rules of democracy. Gender-equality legislation is blocked, anti-gender legislation is passed in expedited processes, and feminist civil society is excluded. In the absence of the possibility for genuine deliberation, feminist opposition members of Parliament (MPs) turn Parliament into a protest arena in which they use various protest strategies to confront the autocratizing regime and expose its anti-feminist aspects. Building on literature on feminist responses to anti-gender politics and literature on formal politics in autocratizing regimes, we show how feminist responses in the autocratizing context bridge formal and protest politics using confrontational strategies, radicalized framing, and coalition politics that integrates feminist voices from formal politics and civil society. We employ a qualitative analysis of opposition parliamentary interventions, complemented with interviews with opposition MPs. Findings contribute to understanding feminist parliamentary resistance to anti-gender politics in autocratizing regimes.
Black mothers from favelas who have organised after the murders of their children are among the most vocal activists against police violence in Brazil. Rooted in shared experiences of loss and injustice, the fight for justice in the face of the structural racism perpetrated by state institutions is central to Black maternal activism. Focusing on Black mothers' movements from Rio de Janeiro, this article explores their strategic use of state channels and their bottom-up, solidarity-based practices of doing justice to bring discussions about racism, state violence and impunity to the fore. Combining on-site (in 2019) and online fieldwork (during 2020-21), the hybrid study reported here shows how doing justice extends beyond legal recognition and encompasses everyday acts of reparation through which Black mother-activists rehumanise their children. Furthermore, they utilise legal institutions as key sites to advance a more comprehensive understanding of justice that places the dignity of Black life at its core.
Does gender shape foreign policy preferences in diaspora populations? Evidence shows that women’s socialization makes them less likely to support conflict, more likely to be altruistic and more likely to support Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP). However, we argue that generational status in the diaspora mediates the gender gap in foreign policy preferences. Based on an original survey fielded in June 2024 in Germany, we find that women are less likely to support defence spending and more likely to support FFP. However, men are more likely to support refugee acceptance. Second-generation immigrants drive the gender gap for defence spending and support for FFP, while first-generation immigrants are responsible for the gender gap in refugee acceptance. While there may be a gender gap in diaspora foreign policy preferences, this is explained by experiences of migration and gendered socialization in Germany.
What explains gendered differences in attitudes towards constitutional change? Focusing on Scottish independence, this article examines how voters interpret the risks and possibilities of constitutional futures. While previous research identifies a persistent gender gap in support for independence, less is known about how such differences are constructed in everyday political reasoning. Drawing on a feminist-informed qualitative analysis of ten focus groups and over 80 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2021, the article explores how interpretations of risk, power and national identity are shaped by gendered and intersectional social positions. It shows that constitutional preferences are grounded in lived experiences of care, precarity and institutional trust rather than fixed risk dispositions. Risk is understood variously as opportunity, threat and responsibility, depending on how individuals locate themselves within social and institutional structures. By reframing risk as socially situated, the article contributes to debates on gender, political behaviour and constitutional politics.
This article examines how intersectionality is articulated and enacted within a typical women's umbrella organization-the Flemish Women's Council-and what facilitates or hinders that process. Using semi-structured interviews with current and former staff members, we take an inductive approach that centres interviewees' own explanations of what enables or constrains intersectional practice within the council. We find broad rhetorical endorsement of intersectionality, yet everyday routines remain largely additive: intersectional references are appended to documents centred on a 'prototypical' cis, white, able-bodied woman. Constraints are primarily institutional: a wide, pillarized membership, tacit expectations of unanimity, and state-linked funding and reporting templates that favour low-conflict, single-axis framing. These dynamics produce an 'umbrella paradox': the very features that grant access and legitimacy also dampen claims from those at the sharpest intersections. Additionally, we engage in design thinking about how to make the internal organization and processes more democratic, intersectionally inclusive and solidarity oriented.
Researchers of anti-gender mobilizations emphasize the central role of child well-being narratives, yet this aspect remains underexplored. This article addresses that gap by focusing on how the "best interest of a child" is strategically used in anti-gender campaigns across Denmark, Italy, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, and Turkey. Using framing theory, we analyze how this frame is constructed, emotionally charged, and politically instrumentalized. Based on a critical frame analysis of 128 documents, we show that the "best interest of a child" frame shifts across contexts and is mobilized to serve different ideological aims while retaining a stable rhetorical core: the assertion that children must be protected. A child appears as a rights-bearing subject or passive object, biologically fixed or easily influenced, and at risk of sexualization or brainwashing. Our findings highlight the narrative's flexibility and internal contradictions, offering a novel lens for understanding the discursive dynamics of anti-gender mobilizations.
This article analyses the politicization of gender-based violence (GBV) in Spain over two decades. By analysing party manifestos, legislative voting and parliamentary debates, we trace a shift from consensual to conflictual salience. We argue that this trajectory is driven, on the one hand, by the sustained pressure of a powerful feminist movement, which initially forced GBV onto the agenda and later championed progressive reforms, and, on the other hand, by the rise in party fragmentation and the electoral rise of a far-right party. We show how the far right pressured the mainstream right to break its prior consensus with the left. Furthermore, we reveal the multidimensionality of this policy issue. The feminist movement's internal divisions generated conflict within the left, leading to unexpected parliamentary alliances.
The feminist literature on care has identified a care crisis in Western societies, focusing especially on liberal welfare regimes. This article provides an overview of the care crisis literature and identifies its biases, with the goal of elaborating a refined concept of a care crisis for eldercare that can be applied beyond the liberal welfare state. This reconceptualisation views the care crisis along two dimensions-(1) the extent and (2) the content of care-and adds attention to context, the state and neoliberal care. The state, in taking responsibility for the governance of care, can formulate political strategies that can either ameliorate or exacerbate the care crisis. This reconceptualisation also refines our understanding of the content of care and its goodness by defining it as good-enough care and elaborating upon its characteristics. My method of theorising is a bricolage that brings together various feminist sources.
This article examines how maternity and medical leave arrangements in Dutch politics are experienced by women politicians. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 21 women at the national, provincial and local levels, it analyses leave through a feminist institutionalist lens, distinguishing between rules in form and rules in use. Although formal provisions allow temporary replacement during pregnancy or illness, they are experienced as rigid, bureaucratic and still technically a temporary 'resignation'. Informal norms of constant visibility and uninterrupted commitment further undermine the effective use of leave. Interviewees reported fear of losing political relevance, strategic avoidance of formal leave and reliance on informal coping mechanisms. The findings demonstrate how seemingly gender-neutral institutional reforms can coexist with entrenched gendered expectations, thereby limiting a truly inclusive politics. The article contributes to feminist institutionalist scholarship by empirically tracing how formal rules and informal practices interact to reproduce gendered inequalities in political life.
The rise of far-right politics in Europe is often associated with growing opposition to gender equality. However, far-right parties are not the only actors engaged in this opposition: mainstream conservative parties have also actively challenged gender equality measures. This article investigates whether similarities can be observed between far-right and conservative parties' positions in parliamentary debates. By analysing debates in Belgium and Spain on reforms to the notion of consent in sexual criminal law and on the protection of trans* rights, it demonstrates that far-right parties (Vlaams Belang and Vox) and conservative parties (Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie and Partido Popular) employ similar discursive strategies to contest gender equality. Nonetheless, the extent and form of this convergence differ depending on the specific gender issue and national context.
Studies in social psychology and political science have noted the negative impact of the "double bind" facing women leaders and candidates, which suggests that women must demonstrate both masculine and feminine attributes in order to achieve the same success as men can achieve by demonstrating only masculine attributes. Less attention has focused on how feminist identity conditions these evaluations. We focus on whether individuals' evaluations of men and women are affected by (1) the gendered attributes associated with a candidate and (2) feminist identity. Using data from an original survey experiment in the US, we investigate the relationship between respondents' feminist self-identification and their evaluation of a candidate's electability. We find that respondents who identify as feminists evaluate women, feminine, and role-incongruent men candidates more positively than non-feminists. Our results suggest that feminism can neutralize some aspects of role incongruity and provide a potential boost to non-traditional leadership candidates.
How do we understand the gendered campaign styles of women candidates contesting elections in which they are structurally constrained with a low probability of success? We introduce the term 'suboptimal campaigning' as a gendered campaign style to emphasise the accommodations women make due to broader gender orders that put them at an electoral disadvantage. Research with 24 female candidates in the 2024 local legislative elections in Medan, Indonesia, revealed their campaigns to be self-limiting in terms ofwhere they campaign (spatial restrictions), who they target (predominantly women voters), when they campaign (temporal constraints) and what campaign practices they employ (limited financial investment and restricted activities). Rationalising female candidates' decisions as strategically 'running as a woman' obscures how Indonesia's masculinised political institutions necessitate that women run suboptimal campaigns. The concept of 'suboptimal campaigning' hence exposes how women are included in electoral democracy as candidates while only minimally disrupting women's political under-representation.
This article brings a multi-level perspective to women's interest representation in Europe by exploring how processes of Europeanisation, de-Europeanisation and regionalisation interact to shape multi-level structures in civil society. Taking the case of the UK's membership of the European Women's Lobby and adopting a longitudinal perspective (1989-2022), the article analyses new empirical data from interviews, a witness seminar and archival texts. It reveals how processes of Europeanisation secured the establishment of a decentralised model of women's interest representation, supporting the differentiated Europeanisation of feminist organisations across sub-state territories. The European Union's structuring role was subsequently displaced by domestic regionalisation processes, which consolidated this regionalised model. More recent de-Europeanisation agendas pursued by the UK government (including but not limited to Brexit) have left the regionalised model of women's interest organisations intact. However, they have constrained the realisation of sub-state regions' divergent Europeanisation preferences and flattened the potentially differentiated de-Europeanisation.
States' responses to international criticism range from denial and aversion to strategic reinterpretation. One of these responses involves reforming a human rights area that poses a low threat to the incumbent's survival in power while continuing violations of other rights. In democratically backsliding countries, reform of political rights and freedoms poses an exceptionally high threat to incumbents' survival in power. This article examines whether backsliding countries respond to criticism of their violations of political rights and freedoms by reforming rights that would not threaten stability, such as women's economic rights. To address this question, the article uses both an extended data set of the United Nations Human Rights Committee's criticism of countries' civil and political rights violations and interview data. The analysis shows that following criticism of political rights violations, backsliding countries reform women's rights at a significantly higher rate than non-backsliding and nonshamed countries.
