Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Gender Studies and Sexuality, 2024
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Resistance To Anti-Gender Campaigns – The Role Of Feminist Change-Makers
Jana-Isabelle Dilger, Maj Ruess
ABSTRACT:
Anti-gender campaigns – targeting gender and sexual minorities and/or women’s rights – have become key components of right-wing populist politics in the past decade in many countries such as Hungary, Italy, and Poland. The poster will introduce the research questions, methodology, and key activities of CCINDLE (“Co-creating inclusive intersectional democratic spaces across Europe”) – a four-year Horizon Europe research project which studies the threats to democracy and feminism and how feminist change-makers are responding to them. The CCINDLE project assumes that feminist theories and activism are vital and essential sources of both: resistance to anti-gender discourses and politics, and to re-kindling citizens’ engagement with democratic institutions and values. The project works directly with feminist grassroots activists, institutional actors, and gender professionals, co-creating theoretical and practical knowledge in three areas: (1) anti-gender campaigns and how they challenge democracy through pathways to violence and politics of knowledge; (2) futures of society envisioned in feminist theories and practices related to democracy with respect to intersectional justice, inclusion, and participation; and (3) feminist movements and institutional responses to anti-gender and other anti-democratic forces. The poster will spotlight initial findings of CCINDLE, notably, the theoretical state-of-the-art concerning the legacies that underpin current European democracies (such as capitalism and colonialism) from a feminist and queer perspective. In addition, the poster will explain a central co-creation activity of the project, namely the Feminist Democracy Labs. The Labs are central to co-creating knowledge in CCINDLE, involving feminist actors across Europe to create a transnational peer learning community.
keywords: Co-creation; Democracy; Feminism; Gender; LGBTQ+