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Endangered Democracies and the Fate of Feminisms
Endangered Democracies and the Fate of Feminisms
Wednesday, 13 July 2016: 16:00-17:30
Location: Hörsaal II (Neues Institutsgebäude (NIG))
RC02 Economy and Society (host committee) Language: English
The 21st century has seen many new challenges to democracy, even in regions such as Europe that long had a solid reputation as social democracies. The rise of new and more extreme forms of neoliberalism and right-wing politics has redirected a trend of democratisation and growing equalities and human rights towards increasing restrictions to citizenship, cuts to and exclusions from welfare state provisions and open manifestations of xenophobia, homophobia and opposition to gender equality.
Following Sylvia Walby (2009/2011) in her analysis of the strong links between the social democratic and the feminist project, this session calls for papers that analyse these developments for current times. What are the specific threats and dangers to democracy that impact on the kind of feminist endeavours? What space for opposition to gender equality is opened up by de-democratisation and what consequences does this opposition have? What are the most important actors that gain or lose power in these processes? How does the financial and the economic crisis relate to this? To what degree and how are feminist projects co-opted by right-wing populism, conservatism, neoliberalism and various types of social phobias?
Papers may focus on any relevant issue and any region of the world, but are preferably highly articulated on how dynamics of democracy and feminism play out in a specifically chosen time-space context.
Session Organizer: