(Anti) Gender Studies and Populist movements in Europe

Introduction

Readers who are following gender politics in Europe and around the world will hardly have missed the rise of so-called anti-gender movements and the worries this conglomeration of right-wing populists, nationalists and conservative Christian mobilisation is causing both to larger fields of gender, feminist and women’s studies, and individual researchers. Indeed, after nearly half a century of relative success with processes of professionalisation and institutionalisation in many national contexts in Europe, gender, women’s and feminist research is under almost daily attack both on- and offline in many settings. In a time marked by neoliberal economics and austerity – not to mention at the time of this writing (April 2020), a global pandemic – many critical knowledge formations are under attack, including climate research and research on racism and socioeconomic inequalities; at times, it seems, science itself is under attack. That said, it is clear that gender theory and research suggesting that gender and relations between the sexes may be historically emergent and diverse, or more than a natural complementarity there for the procreation of the species and the maintenance of the so-called ‘traditional family’, have been particularly targeted. Often framed as a defence of freedom of speech or academic freedom, or through the appropriation of critical language, anti-gender activists, writers and – yes – scholars, cunningly present themselves as the defenders of women’s rights to be feminine, or of children’s rights to their own bodies. Thus, vilifying research and education committed to scrutinising power relations, inequalities and the ongoing coercion of forcing bodies into binary and naturalised gender categories. In a growing number of settings, direct threats are made against scholars, putting them at both professional and personal risk as they do their research, teaching, policy advisory and public engagement in society. In some settings, programmes and courses have been cancelled and defending the most basic dimensions of gender and feminist research, namely, that which is concerned with the (un)equal relations between men and women, has become a struggle.

At the same time, the world is witnessing new waves of large-scale feminist, queer and anti-racist activism, demonstrating that questions of gender, sexuality, race and class are inextricably linked and that those who most adamantly protest against illiberal democracy, growing fascism and nationalism are women, girls, LGBTQI+ people; many of whom are of colour, migrants and/or native and colonised people. Both online and offline movements have been in ascendance in recent years: those that call for an end to sexual harassment (#metoo/#balancetonporc/#Cuéntalo in the UK, France and Spain, respectively); movements that defend rights to abortion and sexual autonomy for women and girls (the black umbrella/#blackprotest movement in Poland); movements to decolonise education, academia and the university (in Belgium and the Netherlands); movements to protest the EU’s strict asylum laws and that address the situation of migrant women (in Denmark), and of Muslim women and women/LGBTQ people of colour in many national settings in Europe and beyond. These movements are instructive, insofar as they remind us that when we defend gender and feminist research, it is a multi- and interdisciplinary field committed to analysing how historical and present relations of capitalism, colonialism, racism and heteronormativity, inter alia, shape gender relations that must be defended.

Open Forum cluster

Concurrent with these movements, a growing range of research projects, conferences and special issues of journals are emerging that all seek to make historical, political and ideological sense of these new waves of growing illiberal and anti-democratic tendencies. In February 2019, with funding from the Uppsala Forum on Democracy, Peace and Justice and European Journal of Women’s Studies and the board of associate editors of the EJWS, students, staff and guests came together for an International Symposium at Uppsala University in Sweden to discuss these issues. The event was co-organised with the Centre for Gender Research and the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Racism at Uppsala University.

Among the topics discussed over two days were: What lessons are we to draw from the emergence and growth of the serious sociopolitical threats to critical gender studies scholarship? How can activist resistance to increasingly openly displayed racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia, and persistent misogyny and sexism push back with lasting effectiveness? And what action can gender studies scholars take collectively to support this activist civil society resistance?

Speakers and participants in the Symposium explored three main aspects of the issues raised: how to make sense of the range of discourses in right-wing populist, anti-feminist, authoritarian and so-called illiberal democracies in different European contexts that present gender studies as an oppressive regime; how national and transnational women’s and feminist movements, and new forms of queer, anti-racist and intersectional feminist activism and movements for reproductive rights in Europe are responding to the new threats; and what new knowledge and insights can be gained from what we are witnessing in these turbulent times. This special Open Forum cluster consists of three contributions, two of which were presented and discussed during the Symposium.

Alessia Donà asks: ‘What’s gender got to do with populism?’ Her answer is to highlight some of the recent literature that illustrates the gender dimension in the rhetoric of radical right-wing populist parties in the European countries where such parties have moved from a fringe position, to being included in governments.

In ‘When gender studies becomes a threatening religion’ Lena Martinsson analyses the fear produced by anti-gender discourses in the Swedish context. She argues that although there are similarities with what is happening in other European countries (as discussed here by Donà), there are some noteworthy national particularities in Sweden.

Irene Molina’s question – ‘Is there a non-socialist Swedish feminism?’ – raises further questions about the tensions and connections between feminist and anti-racist activist and academic strategies and approaches in Sweden. She answers her own question by arguing for the need to make a class perspective and socialist agenda explicit within the feminist and anti-racist movements in Sweden, as one means of countering the growing right-wing and populist threats.

Call and response: Who calls, who responds?

The three contributions provide a snapshot of the topics discussed at the 2019 Uppsala Symposium. We hope they will elicit further discussion and debate within the pages of this journal from a range of locations and positionalities across Europe.

In the heyday of gender studies in Europe, it seemed that ‘we’ (feminists, anti-racists, etc.) were the ones doing the calling: fighting tooth and nail, amongst other things, for the recognition of rights of women and marginalised communities, for the codification of those rights in legislation, and for quotas to tip the balance of representation (in the media, in leadership roles across sectors, etc., etc.) more equitably in our favour. And ‘they’ – the detractors/opponents of those rights – were compelled to respond.

Much of the discussion at the Symposium was based on the premise that, today, ‘we’ – gender studies scholars, as well as feminist and anti-racist activists – find ourselves in a position of responding – in different ways, in different contexts – to being targeted by right-wing populist rhetoric and discourse. ‘They’ call forth an ever deeper, more restrictive patriarchal conservatism, framed by open racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia. ‘We’ respond, as best we can, with strengthened activist resistance.

The urgent question we must attend to now is: when and how can we tip the balance once more, so that ‘we’ are the ones doing the calling?