Revisiting old and opening new spaces for feminist organizing in Austria

ABSTRACT

Before the onset of COVID-19, the political mood in Europe shifted to the right. This is indicated, for example, by efforts to close the borders to migrants, an undermining of legislative and executive democratic structures as well as restrictions on free speech. Such anti-democratic developments have also impacted gender equality – at the level of policy and in daily life. Our paper aims to examine the policies on gender equality of the center-right Austrian government from 2017 to 2019 and their influence on feminist organizing. Applying a participatory, action-based research approach in the context of a neoliberal conservative nation state, the data shows a clear backtrack from a pluralist perspective of gender equality policies and regression towards heteronormativity, complemented by a focus on the gender binary that discounts the social construction of gender. These trends clearly influence feminist organizing.

KEYWORDS:

• Antifeminism
• antigenderism
• backlash
• postfeminism
• feminist organizing
• action-based research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Reflecting the studies underlying this paper and the data generated in our group discussions, the term ‘gender’ here primarily refers to the binary system. Queering perspectives are only represented marginally in the data. Applying a non-binary perspective on gender to the analyses would have required us to adopt an entirely different.

2 A score of 100 means total equality in all measured domains.

3 In the Austrian context, the term ‘gender inclusive language’ refers to writing and speaking in a way that actively mentions all forms of gender.