The report also include case studies from Turkey, Tunisia, Western Balkans, Poland, the Czech Republic, Egypt, and Jordan to investigate how the women’s rights movement is being pushed back. The study attempts to understand the factors behind the backlash and to find strategies to counteract it.
The main findings from the study are that despite the different historical backgrounds of the political anti-gender/feminism movement, the arguments per se are very alike across the Euro-Mediterranean region. Women are believed to already be equal, and gender equality policies are seen as the result of the influence of “the West”. Gender studies are also considered to be unscientific, or simply ideological frameworks. The movements that target women’s and LGBTQI+ rights might also vary between countries, but it is the topic of gender equality that is the symbolic glue that keeps them together as well as helps them gain and preserve power.
Kvinna till Kvinna ends the report by stating that deconstructing anti-Western discourses and the rhetoric that equality is an alien concept for a specific nation, could help us to shape our strategies ahead.
Download the full brief:
The Fierce and the Furious – Feminist insights into the anti gender narratives and movement (English)