This year, millions of people in South Asia head to the polls. Potential outcomes of elections in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, however, do not bode well for women’s rights or gender equality, says Sohela Nazneen. The road ahead is difficult for women’s and LGBTQ+ struggles, as autocratic leaders consolidate power, and right-wing populists, digital repression, and violence against women and sexual minorities are all on the rise
Saskia Brechenmacher, Erin Jones, and Özge Zihnioğlu write that gender is critical to understanding popular resistance against democratic erosion and autocratic hardening around the world
Russia has engaged in some dramatic genderbashing. Most notably in its proclaimed embrace of 'traditional values' as part of an attempt to justify its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. However, writes Janet Elise Johnson, its politics of domestic violence over the last decade have been remarkably contentious
Women and sexual minorities are facing unprecedented levels of targeted political violence. Andrea Krizsan and Conny Roggeband argue that gender-based violence has become a tool for right-wing populist parties and governments to promote and sustain an exclusionary ideal of the nation and the ‘people’ as white, patriarchal, and heteronormative
The less democratic the political regime, the more asymmetrical gender relations become. Raquel Santos Fernandes terms this phenomenon ‘gendering de-democratisation’. Based on data from Turkey, she explains how the process increasingly excludes women, and limits their experiences of citizenship in politics, in the economy, and in their intimate lives
Analyses of the opposition against gender equality in Europe mostly address the opponents of women’s rights as inherently anti-democratic, and feminist actors as democratic by definition. But Joana Lilli Hofstetter and Lucrecia Rubio Grundell use sex work as an example of how anti-democratic backlashes against women’s rights can also be promoted by feminist actors
In recent decades, women across the globe have entered parliaments in greater numbers. Few of them, however, end up as senior MPs with long experience. This, write Ragnhild Louise Muriaas and Torill Stavenes, means that women – even in advanced democracies – are still much less powerful than men in parliaments
Gender-washing regimes pay lip service to liberal norms, but reforms tend to be top-down and symbolic. To advance women’s rights, we need to pay attention to the question of how de jure legal rights can be effectively claimed and experienced by women, according to Daniela Donno
Under Bolsonaro, Brazilians experienced flagrant setbacks in gender rights and policies. Flávia Biroli and Luciana Tatagiba assess the roots of these changes, which targeted participatory institutions and practices. The effects have been profound, highlighting the difficulties for Brazil's new government of turning the tide on anti-feminism
Gender and authoritarianism are interconnected – but in different and unexpected ways. Elin Bjarnegård and Pär Zetterberg think the relationship between them deserves more attention in political science. Here, they expose the relationship in terms of two autocrat strategies: genderwashing and genderbashing
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