Do Women Matter?: Democratic Backsliding and Women's Movements in South Asia

In recent times, South Asia has witnessed dramatic political shifts, including de-democratisation and shrinking civic space, that have affected the space for advocating women’s rights. Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan have experienced the rise of the religious right and conservative populist agendas and the economic shocks that has led precarity. These economic and political shifts have polarized public discourse on gender equality, co-opted women’s empowerment for conservative agendas, permitted t vilification of women’s rights activists, and instigated gender-based violence. In this paper we investigate what does democratic backslide mean for women’s movement contending pushback against bodily autonomy, labour rights, and citizenship claims.

The four South Asian countries we focus on differ with respect to political contestations, kinds of regimes, and independence of public institutions to counter democratic backslide. Women’s movement actors in South Asia have had to navigate the political space strategically, engaging with and making allies within the state, framing their agendas in ways that appeal to development and larger nation building agenda, being careful about not being co-opted by political parties. The recent elections in India and Pakistan, and political change in Bangladesh indicate spaces for women’s struggles being able to promote gender equality agendas will shift further. This paper is a part of a five-year comparative research across the four countries where we track 16 cases of women’s struggles and how they adapt and use different strategies to create space for their agenda in discourse, law, policy in the context of democratic backsliding. Drawing on scholarship on women and feminist movement, gender and politics, and social movement theory we show how women's movement actors navigate challenges of de-dmeocratisation.