Gender Issues on the Battlefield

Gender issues, as well as women’s and LGBTQ+ rights, are hot topics on the polarized political debate in many countries around the world. Gender issues are a real battlefield, and we can even read striking phrases in prochoice demonstrations like “Fighting a Battle Our Grandmothers Won”. After decades of progress concerning gender equality rights, and the constitution of a study field that impacted on not only social sciences and humanities, but also on natural sciences, today gender issues, and gender studies are controversial matters. What has been called antigenderism became a central theme in extreme right wing political agendas. How come that granddaughters and grandmothers now join the same demonstrations and file for rights that years ago seemed guaranteed? How did we get here? I will discuss this topic using sociological tools, mainly benefitting from a very rich field of knowledge constituted by theoretical frameworks and empirical research coming from women, gender and feminist studies.