Since the early 2000s, gender has become one of the most contested terrains of political struggle across Europe and beyond. Feminist and LGBTQ+ movements have pushed for the expansion of reproductive, sexual and gender rights, while anti-gender actors - encompassing religious networks to far-right parties - have mobilized against what they frame as "gender ideology". More recently, these actors have converged with anti-trans actors and trans-exclusionary feminists in an attempt to target trans people and rights. This panel examines the actors, strategies and outcomes of this confrontation, and how it is reshaping party systems, social movements and democratic institutions more broadly.
We invite papers addressing, among others, the following questions: which actors populate the field of contentious gender politics, and how have their repertoires and coalitions evolved over time? What strategies and tactics do feminist and anti-gender movements deploy to advance their claims, and with what degree of success? This focus includes hybrid mobilization practices that unfold at the crossroad between digital and on-the-ground spaces, from online campaigning and platform-based organizing to street protest and grassroots outreach, and the ways these repertoires reinforce or complicate one another. How do movements relate to parties, and to what extent has gender become a partisan cleavage? What are the short- and long-term outcomes of these mobilizations, for policy, for public discourse and for the movements themselves? The panel also welcomes contributions that read gender politics through the lens of democratic backsliding, exploring how the anti-gender and anti-trans mobilization intersects with broader authoritarian and populist projects, and how far-right parties have further developed anti-gender and anti-trans discourse for electoral gain. Comparative papers are particularly encouraged, as are those adopting an intersectional approach that considers how gender politics interacts with race and ethnicity, migration status, class, and religion. Finally, we welcome reflections on the longer arc of this confrontation: what has changed, for movements on both sides, after over fifteen years of sustained mobilization and countermobilization?
The panel brings together scholars of social movements, party politics and gender studies, and welcomes single-country and cross-national comparative work grounded in any methodological approach, from ethnography and process tracing to large-N quantitative analysis.