The Dis/Articulation of Anti-Gender Politics in Eastern Europe: Introduction

ABSTRACT

This special issue examines anti-gender politics in the specific geographical and cultural space of Eastern Europe. It investigates whether the region is just another battlefield for anti-gender politics, or a unique setting for specific developments and strategies, considering the impact and legacy of specific historical experiences and sociological and cultural characteristics. The contributions map out these complex developments, examining Czechia, Georgia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, the Russian Federation, Slovakia, and Ukraine. In this manner, this special issue attempts both to unravel taken-for-granted and all-encompassing conceptual frameworks concerning anti-gender politics and to articulate a more nuanced picture of these mobilizations.

In 2018, several political shifts regarding gender and sexual rights in Eastern Europe strengthened the suspicion of an ongoing “illiberal swerve” (Bustikova and Guasti 2017), if not a complete “illiberal turn” (Dawson and Hanley 2016; Jenne and Mudde 2012). A number of events that took place in countries across the region that year highlight how the vehement contestation of these rights moved to the forefront of new forms of conservative mobilizations and authoritarian endeavors against “gender ideology,” which is understood as “the ideological matrix of the different reforms they try to oppose, which pertain to intimate/sexual citizenship debates, including LGBT[I] rights, reproductive rights, and sex and gender education” (Paternotte and Kuhar 2018, 8). In Eastern Europe, three events stood out that year, each of which illustrates a different form of opposition to gender and sexual rights in the region: against the ratification of an international treaty countering gender-based violence (in Bulgaria); preemptively against the possibility of same-sex marriage (in Romania); and against critical knowledge from a gender perspective (in Hungary).

In late July 2018, the Bulgarian Constitutional Court ruled that the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (informally known as the Istanbul Convention) does not comply with the Bulgarian Constitution. The Convention Ratification Bill had already been met with staunch opposition from the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the right-wing conservative and nationalist governmental coalition, and the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party, leading to the bill’s withdrawal (Slavova 2022). In addition to this political development, the Constitutional Court exploited the flaws in the unofficial translation of the Istanbul Convention, which confusingly translated “gender” as “social sex,” to rule against its ratification. The main argument was that the Convention understands gender as an individual choice of social roles, decoupled from biological sex attributed at birth, and consequently opens the way to the expansion of transgender rights. This interpretation stands in opposition to the Bulgarian Constitution’s principle of equality, which requires the differential treatment of women and men based on their biological differences (Darakchi 2019; Krizsán and Roggeband 2021).

In early October 2018, the Romanian government led by the nominally left-leaning Social Democratic Party organized a referendum to amend the Romanian Constitution. The amendment aimed to change the present definition of family (which defines it as the free-willed union between spouses) into an explicit reference to heterosexual marriage, thereby excluding preemptively the possibility of equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. The referendum was the result of a citizens’ initiative orchestrated by the Coalition for Family, and was supported by the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Romanian branches of the Catholic Church, and several US-based Evangelical religious groups. The “referendum for family” eventually failed on the ground of a turnout below the 30 percent threshold. Importantly, among those approximately 21 percent that did cast their vote, more than 91 percent voted in support of the constitutional amendment. The Coalition for Family seems to have successfully radicalized the gender traditionalism of mainstream political parties, identifying an existential threat to Romanian society called “gender ideology” (Dragolea 2022).

Later in October 2018, through a governmental decree, the Hungarian authorities revoked the accreditation of the only two Gender Studies MA programs in the country. This decision closed the program at Eötvös Loránd Universiy (ELTE), introduced in 2017, while the one taught at Central European University (CEU) since 2006 was able to continue its activities only due to the university’s relocation outside of Hungary (Pető 2020; Vida 2019). The Hungarian government’s decision was supported by four seemingly different arguments (Pető 2020, 10–11). First, they claimed these programs were considered a financial strain, with state funding being redirected to alternative programs supporting the governmental priority to encourage demographic growth in Hungary, including a new MA program in “Economics of Family Policy and Public Policies for Human Development.” Second, the government argued they did not guarantee the successful integration of graduates into the Hungarian labor market, although the CEU graduates directly accessed the global labor market, and the ELTE program was too recent to assess such matters. Third, they claimed these programs were not attracting enough students, although the student quota for the ELTE program was decided by the ministry. Finally, the government deemed that Gender Studies programs were against Christian values, although similar programs are offered by Catholic universities elsewhere across the world.

Transnational Trends and Vernacular Declinations

Occurring in the course of a year, the examples above illustrate both the intensity and diversity of anti-gender politics in Eastern Europe. These events, which were crucial for the launch of anti-gender campaigns in Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, are interconnected, and together they both illustrate and contribute to the transnational trends manifest as anti-gender politics. Concomitantly, these examples evidence the capacious adaptability of these transnational trends as they translate into local contexts. Indeed, although they share frames and objectives, they also display significant differences: they target different issues (gender-based violence in Bulgaria, equal marriage rights in Romania, and academic knowledge production in Hungary); they gather partly different actors (social movements, churches, political parties, courts, and governmental institutions); they use a varied panoply of tools (demonstrations, lobbying, referenda, legal action, and governmental decrees); and they do not necessarily participate in the same political and social projects.

We interpret these events as locally adapted forms—or better said, vernacular declinations—of global anti-gender campaigns. These campaigns are generally understood as a new wave of activism and policy initiatives against the rights of women, and those of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) communities that started in the mid-2000s and exploded in the 2010s (Kuhar and Paternotte 2017). They mark a renewal of conservative activism across the world, with a modernization and targeting of frames and strategies, a generational shift, and increased transnational activism and policy making. Despite a diversity of targets, as illustrated above, these campaigns all identify gender, often labeled as “gender ideology,” “gender theory,” or “genderism,” as the ideological matrix of the various reforms they oppose. This explains why academics and observers have adopted the term “anti-gender” to designate them.

From the start, as shown by developments in countries like Croatia, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia, Eastern Europe seemed a fertile ground for anti-gender campaigns (cf. Bijelić 2008; Graff 2014; Hodžić et al. 2012; Kováts and Põim 2015; Kuhar 2014). This potential has been reinforced by the rise of “illiberalism” in the region (Bogaards and Pető 2022; Graff and Korolczuk 2022; Grzebalska and Pető 2018; Krizsán and Roggeband 2021; Pető 2021; Valkovičová and Meier 2022). However, anti-gender campaigns are not a distinctively Eastern European phenomenon; they can be found in a variety of settings. Scholars have shown that other countries in Europe faced similar developments at the same time, or even before their Eastern counterparts. Early anti-gender mobilizations happened not only in Croatia and Slovenia, but also in Italy and Spain. The year 2013 appears to be a turning point in the history of anti-gender campaigns, due to the victory of conservative forces in the Croatian referendum on the constitutional definition of marriage. In addition, in that year there were large French demonstrations against same-sex marriage and the “Estrela Report” on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights was defeated in the European Parliament (Datta and Paternotte 2023).

More recently, researchers have also shown that these attacks spread quickly to an increasingly diverse set of countries across the world, with Europe and Latin America as epicenters (Ayoub and Stoeckl 2023). This phenomenon is reinforced by transnational emulation and diffusion, with actors studying each other’s moves, copying successful strategies, and interacting across borders (Datta and Paternotte 2023). As such, they have developed a dense infrastructure of transnational meetings and organizations. In these networks, Eastern European and former Soviet actors are but one entity. That said, some of these are particularly notable, such as the Russian presence at the World Congress of Families (Stoeckl 2020), the Polish organization Ordo Iuris (Datta 2020), and the Hungarian government led by Viktor Orbán (Pető 2021).

While anti-gender campaigns are waged all around the globe, they do not take the same shape everywhere. After emphasizing cross-border commonalities and documenting the transnational nature of anti-gender campaigns, research has explored how these campaigns are adopted on the ground, and are adapted to the local context and a specific political opportunity structure. These campaigns did not start at the same time and did not include the same actors everywhere, an observation that raises many questions about the underlying dynamics. For instance, while Croatia, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia appear as early cases, Bulgaria, Romania, and even Hungary—the three countries mentioned above—came relatively late to the game. The same may be said about particular actors in these campaigns; these vary according to national circumstances. In some countries, there is a strong social movement that can pressure political actors and institutions, while, in cases like the Russian Federation and Hungary, anti-gender campaigns are largely state-engineered. Similarly, while religious actors are involved almost everywhere in the region, they belong to different (but mainly Christian) denominations (e.g., Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelicals). They may concomitantly coordinate and compete with one another and do not enjoy the same level of public presence and political influence. Finally, political allies are to be found not only among far-right or radical-right populist parties, but also among conservative or Christian-democratic, and even social-democratic parties. For these reasons, the present special issue pays particular attention to national variations across Eastern Europe.

Focusing on Eastern Europe brings an additional question: if countries in the region vary notably, can we discern a regional specificity with regard to anti-gender campaigns? Indeed, even when they do not focus on a single country, scholars often restrict the scope of their analysis to Eastern Europe (Bogaards and Pető 2022; Bustikova and Guasti 2017; Graff and Korolczuk 2022; Grzebalska and Pető 2018; Krizsán and Roggeband 2019, 2021).¹ Starting with this observation, we claim in this special issue that there is a need to investigate whether the region is just another battlefield for anti-gender politics or a unique setting for specific developments and strategies. We raise awareness on this complex matter and outline potential answers, insisting on the impact and legacy of specific historical experiences and the sociological and cultural characteristics that have modeled Eastern Europe in distinctive ways. In addition to the region’s consolidation as one of the bastions of illiberalism in the world, we insist on several features that deserve further exploration: state–church relations, welfare regimes, EU accession and “Europeanization,” and post-communist legacies, including the current role of the Russian Federation. Concretely, we examine several interrelated and overlapping themes, such as the extent and limits of the collaboration between politicians with illiberal tendencies, and civil society groups with a socially conservative agenda (in this issue, Guasti and Bustikova 2023; Mos 2022; Norocel and Băluță 2021); the role of national Christian Orthodox churches—sometimes aligned with other religious actors—in mobilizing anti-gender agendas (in this issue, Edenborg 2021; Norocel and Băluță 2021; Shevtsova 2022); the facilitation of domestic, international, and transnational strategic interlinkages on anti-gender politics by shared storylines that center on opposition to the European Union (EU) as an epitome of defending gender and LGBTQI rights (in this issue, Edenborg 2021; Mos 2022; Shevtsova 2022).

The first feature concerns the complicated relationships between religious institutions and the post-communist states in the region (Grzymała-Busse 2015; Stan and Turcescu 2011). For example, the legacy of atheism as a quasi-doctrine of the state witnessed large sections of the population in Czechia embrace more secular values. This notwithstanding, the high levels of trust enjoyed by religious institutions after the collapse of communism enabled their growing involvement in national politics elsewhere. For instance, the Catholic Church in Poland or Croatia, and the Orthodox Churches in Romania or the Russian Federation traded their support for various political parties for subsequent policy concessions against the rights of women and LGBTQI communities. Concomitantly, the consolidation of national identity in the polities across the region was accompanied by a process of re-traditionalization packaged as “spiritual rebirth.” This shift found steadfast support among the religious institutions interested in fusing a specific religious affiliation and the ethnic majority of the polity in question, such as “Polak = Katolik” in Poland (Grzymała-Busse 2015, 23), or Romanians “born into Orthodox Christianity” in Romania (Norocel 2013, 115).

A second feature relates to the post-communist welfare regimes in Eastern Europe (Cinpoeş and Norocel 2020; Geva 2021; Graff and Korolczuk 2022; Fodor 2022; Kováts 2021; Krizsán and Roggeband 2019; Lendvai-Bainton and Szelewa 2021). The collapse of communism brought about the opportunity for several Eastern European polities to join the European Union. The EU accession was packaged into the imperative to move past their “communist legacy” and the welfare principles it had strived to engender (albeit with varying degrees of success). In expiation they were to embrace neoliberal “shock therapy” as the best vehicle to catch up with their Western counterparts and confirm their “return to Europe.” Consequently, wave after wave of citizens from Eastern Europe migrated across the EU, as neoliberal dogma amid economic crisis brought about economic devastation and social upheaval, which translated into gendered processes of de-democratization (Krizsán and Roggeband 2019). During the previous decades, gender equality—though not usually endorsed in a proactive manner—was at least accepted as a legitimate policy goal. In the new context, however, governments across the region had begun to challenge the normative assumptions underpinning gender equality endeavors. Pursuing this agenda further, they then undermined formally adopted and accepted policies, and blocked further policy objectives that aimed at increasing gender equality and empowerment of LGBTQI communities across the region (Krizsán and Roggeband 2019, 5–8). Welfare retrenchment was then folded onto a welfare chauvinist discourse that made an ethno-cultural distinction between the in-group and out-groups (Cinpoeş and Norocel 2020). In addition, the rights of women and LGBTQI communities were described as imposed from Brussels and threatening state sovereignty, national values, and national identity (Graff and Korolczuk 2022; Krizsán and Roggeband 2019). In countries like Hungary, this shift led to the emergence of a “carefare regime” (Fodor 2022), whereby women’s claims to social provision are effectively contingent on their belonging to the ethnic majority and their ability to do care work.

An adjacent element concerns the very processes of EU accession and “Europeanization.” The unequal integration of Eastern European polities into the EU has fueled growing resentment against “West/Europe” (Kulpa 2014), which has also been identified as the cradle of “gender ideology” and the main purveyor of gender and sexuality policies. This line of analysis is central in the discourses of some anti-gender actors that depict gender as a symbol of a new form of colonization of the West, directed against Eastern Europe, and tied to “Europeanization” and the globalizing neoliberal order. For example, in Poland, the rallying cry was to mobilize against “Ebola from Brussels.” This identified “Brussels,” the epitome of a distant EU bureaucracy, with the tropical regions of sub-Saharan Africa ravaged by Ebola, a highly contagious disease. In this case, however, the virus was “gender ideology,” which threatened to weaken and destroy the healthy body of the Polish nation. Created in ultraconservative quarters, the slogan was readily embraced by radical-right populist parties in their effort to weaken the generally strong support for EU institutions (Graff and Korolczuk 2022, 92–113). This has led various scholars to explain the success of anti-gender campaigns in terms of the failure of “Europeanization” as an elitist and technocratic process (Rawłuszko 2021; Kováts 2021).

Finally, the impact of the various iterations of Russian imperialism on the relations with other Eastern European countries is worth mentioning. The communist regime in the Soviet Union, lasting several generations, provided the longest opportunity to put into practice the ideals of social welfare and gender equality, as well to enforce atheism as a state doctrine. After 1945, these ideals were exported to its communist satellites in Eastern Europe. For decades, these ideas included specific positions on such areas as the promotion of atheism, and rather open access to abortion (Romania being a notable exception). The fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union have dramatically transformed this landscape, with “traditional values” becoming almost an official ideology not only in the Russian Federation (Edenborg 2018, 2022) but also—to varying extents—in other countries in the region, as a counter to the previous rules of socialism. The combination of increased nationalism and a return of religion in the public sphere has created ideal conditions for the expansion of anti-gender campaigns, a phenomenon further reinforced by growing illiberalism. In recent years, appeals to defend the Russian nation and its sovereignty from Western influence, and to protect children as the embodiment of the nation’s future, took expansionist and transnational forms (Edenborg 2018, 2022; Stoeckl 2020). While actual policies in several countries of the region do not differ significantly, the opposition between “traditional” and “European” values became a geopolitical marker embodying the cultural limits between Western and Eastern Europe (Mos 2022). Tellingly, the ongoing war in Ukraine is also justified with the imperative to liberate that country from the EU’s “coercive homosexualization,” while Ukrainian authorities are willing to consider reforms like same-sex marriage to prove their belonging to Europe (Edenborg 2022; Shevtsova 2020, 2021).

Disentangling Complex Realities

This special issue aims both to position anti-gender politics in Eastern Europe and to contribute to a subtler conceptualization of anti-gender politics. Locating these campaigns and paying attention to the forms they take in Eastern Europe is a first step in this effort. We also suggest a second step structured along specific lines of criticism—disentangling complex realities, and avoiding ready-made and hasty conceptualizations or analytical frameworks developed for other contexts—in order to encourage more refined critiques.

A first line of criticism concerns the fact that anti-gender campaigns have frequently been analyzed through single-axis approaches that are anchored in a given discipline or a thematic field of study, instead of trying to articulate these to better understand a complex phenomenon. Following existing research traditions and driven by the tools, concepts, and methodologies of their disciplines, scholars have mostly examined these initiatives through the prism of religion, populism, or neoliberalism. Furthermore, given the initial lack of research in Europe, they have often relied on existing concepts and theories developed to study the expansion of the Christian right in the United States, such as “backlash,” “culture wars,” or “countermovement.” While these concepts and theories may bring valuable insights, they are often imbued with the specific history of the context for which they were crafted and do not allow scholars to grasp local specificities.

Recent research, however, has amended previously hegemonic accounts, as exemplified by discussions on the interactions between neoliberalism, authoritarianism, and neoconservatism. Often based in Eastern Europe, these scholars have criticized theories like those proposed by Wendy Brown (2019) and Melinda Cooper (2017) to suggest alternative articulations that insist on the role of the profound de-structuring of Eastern European societies under neoliberalism in paving the way for autocratic leaders and anti-gender politics. For them, these politicians are reacting to the post-communist free-market mantra and neoliberal reforms. Radical-right populism appears then as a conservative retaliation against neoliberalism in the region (Graff and Korolczuk 2022; Fodor 2022; Geva 2021; Grzebalska and Pető 2018; Grzebalska, Kováts, and Pető 2017; Kováts 2021; Mad’arova and Hardoš 2022).

Another line of criticism pertains to the complex imbrications between radical-right populism, gender, and religion. It has investigated critically “the entanglements of gender and religion in radical right populist ideology, [explored] the active role of religion in the populist discourse, and [invited researchers] to combine the analysis of the political sphere with the analysis of occurrences in the broader society” (Norocel and Giorgi 2022, 8; see also, Dietze and Roth 2020; Hennig 2018; Tranfić 2022). Simultaneously, Norocel and Giorgi (2022) have emphasized the key role of radical-right populists in raising “family values” to the top of the political agenda. Their research project is buttressed by earlier scholarship focused on the importance of disentangling complex social realities. It also invited scholars to distinguish between anti-gender campaigns and radical-right populism. Already then, while acknowledging important influences and crossovers, the critique targeted analyses that treated mobilizations against “gender ideology” and the rise of radical-right populism as two sides of the same coin, and suggested interpreting these phenomena as two distinct projects that may converge or compete against one another in particular locations (Paternotte and Kuhar 2018, 13–14).

A recent compelling theoretical construct, that of “opportunistic synergy” (Graff and Korolczuk 2022), pursues a similar objective of recognizing these distinct projects. It accounts for the mutually beneficial interaction between two types of actors. The first set of actors includes both radical-right populist and conservative parties that resort to an “anti-gender rhetoric to increase their moral legitimacy in the eyes of traditionalist voters.” The second set are the “ultraconservative organizations” that attempt to “introduce legal changes, gain access to funding and participate in policy-making processes” (Graff and Korolczuk 2022, 24).

We have this synergy in mind, inspired by Verloo and Paternotte’s (2018) challenges for future research on anti-gender politics in Europe. In particular, there is an imperative of better conceptual development, the need for further vernacularization of concepts and approaches, and the importance of overcoming antagonistic “us versus them” studies. As such, we have encouraged the contributors to this special issue to engage in fine-grained theoretical and empirical work to understand better what is at stake. We have also promoted meticulous comparative studies, to avoid overstating what is context-specific and consider generalities. Against catch-all explanatory categories like “global backlash” or “global right,” we claim that there is no model that fits all, but a complex phenomenon that challenges simple causalities and claims to theoretical universality.

Dis/Articulating Anti-gender Politics in Eastern Europe

This special issue comprises five articles (Guasti and Bustikova 2023; Mos 2022; Norocel and Băluță 2021; Shevtsova 2022; Edenborg 2021). The articles expand the remit of the literature on anti-gender politics in Eastern Europe by introducing new case studies, such as Georgia and Ukraine (Shevtsova 2022), and Romania (Norocel and Băluță 2021), by providing expanded regional comparative frames (Guasti and Bustikova 2023; Mos 2022), and by fleshing out new patterns of mobilization (Edenborg 2021), adding complexity to the empirical mapping of the region beyond Hungary and Poland. In addition to this, several articles suggest theoretical contributions better suited for synthesizing the complexity of anti-gender politics in Eastern Europe and beyond, such as the concepts of “retrogressive mobilization” (Norocel and Băluță 2021), and “discourse coalitions” (Edenborg 2021).

The first article of this special issue examines varieties of illiberal backlash in Central Europe (namely in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic) (Guasti and Bustikova 2023). It starts with the developments in the past two decades, whereby abortion, gender equality, and LGBTQI rights have become hotly contested topics. Petra Guasti and Lenka Bustikova argue that the extent of backlash reflects the strength of an alliance between socially conservative advocacy groups and political parties. However, they also provide evidence that two factors constrain illiberal politicians. First, changes in policies and regulations can provoke anger if they go against public opinion. Second, a pluralistic, moderate, confessional political party dampens the radicalization of parties in power and curbs illiberal backlash.

The second article argues that anti-gender politics are an attempt to reject a particular articulation of European values (Mos 2022). The EU is often seen as a bulwark of progressive values, including LGBTQI rights. By restricting such rights, politicians thus appear to reject the EU’s fundamental principles. In this article, Martijn Mos argues that anti-gender politics is often a surprisingly pro-European phenomenon. Many of its practitioners rebuff accusations of Euroskepticism. For them, rights restrictions are less an attempt to reject European integration than to redirect its trajectory. They aim to reconnect the EU with Europe’s civilizational roots. The paper illustrates this argument by analyzing the discourse of anti-gender actors in Hungary, Lithuania, and Slovakia.

The third article investigates the articulation of anti-gender politics in Romanian parliamentary debates centered on the assertion that a referendum ultimately defends the “traditional family” (Norocel and Băluță 2021). The article employs the concept of retrogressive mobilization to examine political debates around the organization of a referendum. The concept itself conveys the complex collection of mainstream conservative as well as radical-right populist political parties. Other actors involve both national and transnational religious institutions, civil society organizations attacking women’s reproductive rights, and extreme right groupings focused on the maintenance of the ethnic and racial purity of the native population in the country in question. Ov Cristian Norocel and Ionela Băluță evidence that, in Romania, the contours of retrogressive mobilization transgress both the ideological left–right cleavage, and even party loyalty. They demonstrate how the retrogressive mobilization articulates two antithetical narrative scenarios, both centering on the Orthodox “nature” of the Romanian nation, whose existence and survival are said to hinge on the protection of the “traditional family” from “LGBT ideology.”

The fourth article, by Maryna Shevtsova, resorts to a comparative framework to examine issues of religion, nation, state, and anti-gender politics in Georgia and Ukraine (Shevtsova 2022). Under pressure from the EU and civil society activists, countries in the European Neighborhood have made some advancements concerning the rights of LGBTQI communities. However, local resistance then emerged as the EU advocated for LGBTQI rights internationally. In this context, Shevtsova analyzes the role of the Christian Orthodox Churches in such resistance in Georgia and Ukraine, and argues that, as the LGBTQI movement was gaining more visibility, the national Christian Orthodox churches turned into major actors opposing LGBTQI rights and so-called “gender ideology.” In both cases, they have proven effective in preventing or slowing down the promotion of sexual and gender equalities.

The fifth and final article, by Emil Edenborg, analyzes the Russian Federation’s domestic and international promotion of “traditional values” (Edenborg 2021). This article deploys the concept of “discourse coalition,” which entails a convergence of both actors and discourses, for analyzing anti-gender politics and its interlinkages with other forms of opposition to sexual and gender equalities. This piece conceptualizes how actors with disparate ideological, philosophical, and religious views can communicate and produce meaningful interventions if they share particular storylines. Edenborg illustrates this contribution by studying how “traditional values” are promoted by the Russian state. Two storylines, stressing the needs to protect “traditional values” from outside interference and children from harmful sexual information, enable discursive affinities and interconnections across differences, domestically, internationally, and transnationally.

In sum, the articles brought together in this special issue aim to expand with a gender perspective the burgeoning literature on radical-right populism and illiberalism in Eastern Europe (Brusis 2016; Bustikova and Guasti 2017; Norocel and Szabó 2019; Pirro and Stanley 2022). Indeed, this literature is at times surprisingly uncurious about the role played by gender in the articulation of these political phenomena (for critique, see Norocel 2013; Köttig, Bitzan, and Pető 2017; Maiguashca 2019). Against this backdrop, the pieces in this issue show how paying closer attention to the articulation of gender in politics sheds new light on established fields, such as democratization studies or radical-right populist politics.

We also intend to place the examination of gender and politics within the context of wider social and political developments. Returning to one of the examples above, the attack on Gender Studies by the government of Viktor Orbán cannot be understood without taking into account the ongoing attempts to curtail academic freedom and build an alternative knowledge base in Hungary (Pető 2020, 2021; Paternotte and Verloo 2021). With this in mind, this special issue aspires to bring a new impetus to the scholarly reflection on societal and political dynamics in the East European post-communist context. Our overarching argument is that these developments should be regarded not as a mere backlash on the rights of women and LGBTQI communities, but rather as a constitutive element of a wider attempt to recast democracy into illiberal forms. By widening the scope of our scholarly reflection, we demonstrate that anti-gender politics are a good vantage point to gauge broader social and political challenges in Eastern Europe.

In conclusion, the present special issue aims both to disarticulate taken-for-granted conceptual frameworks concerning anti-gender politics, and to articulate a more nuanced picture of the subject matter by means of insights from Eastern Europe. The pieces here examine key variations of anti-gender mobilizations (different actors, different projects, and different tools to achieve them). We hope that the readers of Problems of Post-Communism will find the articles in this special issue analytically persuasive and empirically rich in advancing further knowledge on this pressing topic.

Disclosure Statement

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

Additional information

Funding

The work for this special issue was supported by the Agence universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF), through the research project “Campagnes ‘anti-genre’ en Europe: enjeux de savoir, enjeux de pouvoir” (CAGE) [Anti-gender campaigns in Europe: issues of knowledge, issues of power] (Norocel; Paternotte); and by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet, VR) [2020-04164] (Norocel).

Notes

1. Very few publications—mostly edited volumes and special issues—include both Western and Eastern European cases (Dietze and Roth 2020; Hark and Villa 2015; Kováts and Põim 2015; Kuhar and Paternotte 2017; Lombardo, Kantola and Rubio Marin 2021; Möser, Ramme and Takács 2022; Verloo and Paternotte 2018; Verloo 2018; Vida 2022). Even fewer publications embrace European and non-European cases (Ayoub and Stoeckl 2023; Cabezas and Vega 2022; Norocel and Giorgi 2022; Graff, Kapur, and Walters 2019).