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Sexual Politics in Contemporary Europe: Resonance and Dissonance
Abstract
The Conclusion provides an overview of the book’s key arguments, and it provides a synopsis of our key findings. It reconsiders the role that feminism and feminist civil society actors play in law and policy framing and agenda setting at the EU. The chapter highlights the usefulness of our conceptual framework for those interested in sexual politics in various contexts.KeywordsFeminist analysisThe EUFeminist civil societyThe criminal lawThe future
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Leigh Goodmark's work on domestic violence argues for alternatives to criminal justice to 'solve' issues of gendered violence. The criminalisation of sex work and prostitution is rarely discussed in this context-a rather odd omission given the increasing trend towards 'criminalising demand' and counter-calls for decriminalisation in this domain. In this article, we bring the two debates into conversation, using Goodmark's work to bring analytical clarity to the prostitution debate and connect sex work to wider social justice debates in feminist anti-violence circles. We aim to move the conversation beyond retribution and the view that law is justice to outline a vision of justice for sex workers grounded in the principles of rights, recognition and representation. By contextualising the decriminalisation of prostitution within the framework of a wider anti-carceral justice movement, we seek to build alliances for social justice that transcend the current divide.
Measuring violence against women raises methodological questions, as well as the wider question of how to understand violence and locate it in relation to a societal context. This is all the more relevant given that measurement of violence against women in the EU has made an interesting phenomenon apparent, the so-called 'Nordic Paradox', whereby prevalence is higher in more gender equal countries. This article examines this phenomenon by exploring a range of factors-methodological, demographic and societal-to contextualise disclosed levels of violence. The analysis makes use of a multilevel analytic approach to take into account how macro and micro levels contribute to the prevalence of violence. The intercepts are then used to illustrate how taking these into account might provide an alternative ranking of levels of violence against women in EU countries. The results show that the 'Nordic Paradox' disappears-and can be undone-when factors at individual and country levels are considered. We conclude that the 'Nordic Paradox' cannot be understood independently from a wider pattern of violence in society, and should be seen as connected and co-constituted in specific formations, domains or regimes of violence. Our results show that the use of multi-level models can provide new insights into the factors that may be related to disclosed prevalence of violence against women. This can generate a better understanding of how violence against women functions as a system, and in turn inform better policy responses.
Prostitution is a standard case of morality politics (MP), defined as a particular type of politics that engages issues closely related to religious and/or moral values, giving way to strong and uncompromising value conflicts in both societal and political spheres. This kind of issues have increasingly become a European policy matter due to their transnational nature and the tensions they create between different legal principles. Our hypothesis is that this leads to the emergence of a specific type of European morality politics (EMP) reflecting the particular constraints of the policymaking of the European Union (EU). The purpose of this article is to understand to which extent the rise of prostitution on the EU agenda alters usual patterns of MP to shape a distinctive type of EMP. Our findings suggest that prostitution characterizes EMP albeit with a significant difference, namely the challenge to regulatory inertia through the successful mobilisation of European values by some policy entrepreneurs to promote a neo-abolitionist approach.
Feminist research and activism has along history of engaging with the range and extent of men’s intrusive practices on women in public, taking as itsstarting point public space as aplace where gender relations are contested. Here, the impact of men’s practices on women and girls is understood not only in terms of their safety, but also their freedom, highlighting how the “safety work” mandated for women and girls in public functions to limit women’s space for action and responsiblise them for preventing violence. Drawing from research conducted in the UK, this article sets out in detail the concept of “safety work” and how it relates to not only women’s behaviours but our sense of being in public places. It ends in exploring the possibilities of feminist self defence as a means of making safety work visible and measurable, to both ourselves and the wider world.
The Employment Equality Framework Directive (EED) is the first and still the only EU law that requires EU member states to combat sexual orientation discrimination. It requires states to change employment laws or draft news ones that prevent employers and coworkers from discriminating against gay and lesbian employees. Implementation of the EED was problematic, despite strong support for the law among many EU member states and their publics. An analysis of the EED’s provisions shows that in countries where religious organizations provide a substantial share of a country’s social services, governments are more likely to transpose the directive incorrectly. These findings are based on an innovative research design that addresses one legal subject matter within a directive. Contradicting earlier research showing it has little to no role, public opinion about an EU law can affect compliance. This article also sheds more light on how religious organizations and beliefs affect European integration, comparatively understudied in the literature. These findings also have important implications for the future of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) human rights legislation at the EU level.
Gender regimes of belonging are contextually variable and closely linked to other regimes of belonging, such as the family, the nation, or, the region. In the case of Poland, this contextuality and interdependence becomes apparent when analyzing struggles between feminist and Catholic anti-choice environments. While the first group opts for gender democracy, the other favors a familistic social order. In the mid-90s, the struggle over “Polish” gender regimes took an international dimension and was played out as well at the international fora of the UN. When women's rights actors from Poland appeared at the 4th World Conference on Women held by the UN in China in 1995, they experienced being positioned within a pre-structured spatial order and learned that this positioning and the synthesis within scalar regimes of belonging, such as the scale of family but also that of region, have a major impact on their political agency. The spatial order of the UN is a field of conflict, as certain positioning within regimes of belonging might limit political agency and therefore constrain the making of claims. NGOs struggle to get representation and definitional power over space and collective identity categories, but they also put effort into changing the very composition and hierarchies within identity regimes. Toward this end, they form coalitions and networks and perform group identities and may even act in opposition to institutionalized regimes of belonging. The use of concepts such as belonging and scale allows us to avoid the analytical limits that are linked to the theoretical frameworks of recognition and identity politics. This article explores the strategies of scalar politics of belonging applied by NGOs, which also lead to the establishment of bodies representing women from the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, such as the Karat Coalition, but it also draws attention to the political effects of scaling belonging through the “family” or “Europe.” Today, the question as to what shape gender regimes of belonging should take is still an important site of struggle.
Recent work in the field of feminist institutionalism has made important progress in furthering our understanding of gendered institutional change. I argue that gradual ideational changes play an essential role in processes of gendered institutional change, and that examining the interaction between ideas and gendered institutions is of great importance for gaining a better understanding of processes of this type. This article revisits an empirical study of gendered institutional change in Swedish prostitution policy in the effort to specify two idea-based mechanisms that are conducive to gendered change, namely, consensus concerning the problem and gendering of the problem.
This chapter introduces the ‘mosaic of integration theory’ as a pluralist approach and heuristic device which centres on the variety of research questions and objectives raised by the broad spectrum of integration theorists operating in different areas and pursuing different purposes. The metaphor of the ‘mosaic’ indicates that each theoretical approach can be seen as a stone that adds to the picture of the EU as an unfinished and changing order. The mosaic approach rests on general conceptual definitions, for example, of ‘integration’ and ‘theory’ based on distinctions between ‘narrow’ and ‘broader’ definitions of integration: broader definitions of integration include both a social process (the shifting of loyalties) and a political process (the construction of new political institutions) while narrower definitions centre on the political institutions. The chapter differentiates three distinct uses of theory that are represented by this book’s contributions and form part of the mosaic approach, for example, theory as ‘explanation and understanding’, as ‘description and analysis’, or as ‘critique and normative intervention’. These uses are applied to study politics, polity, and policy as the three main areas of integration over distinct periods. Finally, the chapter introduces this book’s common research questions about economic, refugee, and security crises, and introduces all contributions.
The analysis in this article provides an alternative interpretation of trafficked women’s self-presentation before the courts. I use complete observations of German judges deposing women in camera who are witnesses in criminal proceedings against their traffickers. My objective is to develop and inform a different account of the women’s self-presentation by prioritising the narrative accounts of their ‘lived’ experiences of trafficking. Invoking Judith Butler’s analysis of the complex transactions between subjectification and subversive agency and emerging debates in the health arena in psychosocial theory on resilience, I ask: How is trafficked women’s self-presentation in criminal proceedings an expression of their agency and resilience?
Why does #RepealedThe8th matter for feminist legal studies? The answers seem obvious in one sense. Feminism has long constituted itself through the struggle for sexual and reproductive justice, and Irish feminism has contributed a significant ‘legal win’ with the landslide vote of approval for lifting abortion restrictions in the referendum on the 25th May 2018. That win comes at a global moment when populist legal engagement is doing significant damage in countries that regard themselves as world leaders, and beyond. #RepealedThe8th offers Ireland, and the world, the actuality that the popular vote, and everything that contributes to it, could be something else. Repeal shows how legal tools like the vote may be made into an expression of care for reproductive lives. This expression is important in recognizing pregnant people as knowing agents who are best placed to decide, and in seeking to do justice to those who contribute to everyday reproductive life. But repeal, like the many who brought it into being, has multiple meanings. #RepealedThe8th matters because it is a moving process of socio-legal translation, which draws on a collective energy, ‘repeal energy’, to turn the travesty that was the Eighth Amendment and all it represents into a search for the rest of reproductive life. In opening up the meaning of the vote, much like feminists elsewhere have opened up the meaning of the strike, Irish feminists have turned public mourning over past mistreatment into a series of reproductive connections. This is not a strategy that can be rolled out. Figuring out #RepealedThe8th will take many tellings. Rather we need to give repeal, and repealers, room to breathe and rest. We need to feel our way through repeal’s production of legal change so that this success is not reduced to some generic transferable set of legal instructions. I begin by reflecting on repeal as a process of feminist socio-legal translation, which shows us how legal change comes about through the motivation of collective joy, the mourning of damaged and lost lives, the sharing of legal knowledge, and the claiming of the rest of reproductive life. [Available open access at https://link.springer.com/journal/10691/26/3]
The social-democratic-inspired “Nordic model”, with its agenda for gender equality, has been an important example for the development of political interventions to transform society but at the same time, it has been functioning as an emerging gender normalising and stabilising structure. The last decade it has also become focused by antigender movements and ethno-nationalistic parties both as emblematic for the Nordic nations as well as a threat that must be destroyed to save the nation. This issue will elaborate further on gender equality as a node, a floating signifier in powerful and often contradictory discourses situating the discussions within the tradition of scholarships of hope through a dialogue about articles that search for realistic utopias that might be considered to be “beyond gender equality”. The included articles engage with the messiness and crossroads of gender equality in relation to the work-line, territories, neo-liberalism, religion, the crisis of solidarity and the success of anti-genderism agenda.
This article examines the so-called “Nordic model” in action. Using feminist argumentation, the model aims to abolish commercial sex by criminalizing the buying of sexual services while not criminalizing the selling, as the aim is to protect, rather than punish, women. Utilizing over 2 years of ethnographic fieldwork and 195 interviews in Sweden, Norway, and Finland, this article argues that in a situation where the majority of people who sell sex in the region are migrants, the regulation of commercial sex has shifted from prostitution to immigration policies, resulting in a double standard in the governance of national and foreign sellers of sexual services. Client criminalization has a minor role in the regulation of commercial sex in the area, and instead, migrants become targets of punitive regulation executed through immigration and third-party laws. Nationals are provided social welfare policies to assist exit from commercial sex such as therapeutic counseling, whereas foreigners are excluded from state services and targeted with punitive measures, like deportations and evictions. My fieldwork reveals a tension between the stated feminist-humanitarian aims of the model, to protect and save women, and the punitivist governance of commercial sex that in practice leads to control, deportations, and women’s conditions becoming more difficult. The article concludes that when examined in action, the Nordic model is a form of humanitarian governance that I call punitivist humanitarianism, or governing in the name of caring. © 2018 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
This article examines the recent wave of grassroots mobilizations opposing gender equality, LGBT rights, and sex education, which vilify the term “gender” in public debates and policy documents. The antigender movement emerged simultaneously in various locations after 2010. We argue that this is not just another wave of antifeminist backlash or a new tactic of the Vatican in its ongoing efforts to undermine gender equality but represents a new ideological and political configuration that emerged in response to the global economic crisis of 2008 and the ongoing crisis of liberal democracy. The backlash of the eighties and nineties combined neoconservatism with market fundamentalism (which is to some extent still the case with neoconservative Christian fundamentalists in the United States and elsewhere), while the new movement—though in many ways a continuation of earlier trends—tends to combine gender conservatism with a critique of neoliberalism and globalization. Liberal elites are presented as “colonizers”; “genderism” is demonized as an ideology imposed by the world’s rich on the poor. Thanks to the anticolonial frame, antigenderism has remarkable ideological coherence and great mobilizing power: right-wing populists have captured the imagination and hearts of large portions of local populations more effectively than progressive movements have managed to do. The article examines the basic tenets of antigenderism, shedding light on how this ideology contributes to the contemporary transnational resurgence of illiberal populism. We argue that today’s global Right, while selectively borrowing from liberal-Left and feminist discourses, is in fact constructing a new universalism, an illiberal one. While the examples discussed are mostly from Poland, the pattern is transnational, and our conclusions may have serious implications for feminist theory and activism.
The article explores the reasons why the EU should ratify the Council of Europe Istanbul Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, adopted in 2011, and the consequences the ratification may entail. In the first part, I will make a few remarks on the main provisions of the Convention, which must be considered as the most advanced system of protection of women from violence at the international level in force for the time being, and I will comment on the current status of EU gender equality policies. In the second part, starting from the European Commission roadmap regarding the EU accession to the Convention (October 2015), and the proposal for a Council decision on the signing of the Convention (March 2016), the I will analyse the legal bases for the ratification of the Convention by the EU, and the possible impact this treaty may have on EU policies. I argue first that the legal basis of the decision of the Council concluding the agreement cannot be limited to Articles 82 to 84 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the EU (TFEU), but should be extended to - at least - Articles 19 and 168 TFEU. I will then explore the impact of the Convention on future policies of the EU, also providing a comparison with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which constitutes the first international treaty on human rights ratified by the European Union. Secondly, I will contend that one of the provisions of the Convention, namely Article 30(2), which requires States to compensate victims of violence who have sustained 'serious injury or impairment of health', has direct effect.
In Sweden, support for right-wing xenophobic parties and neo-Nazi inspired organisations are on the increase, and are connected with, and manifested through, an emotional regime of hate directed towards feminism and towards women embodying feminist agendas. At the same time, feminist-inspired concerns about gender equality are often mobilised and appropriated for racist and anti-immigration arguments.
The article explores this conjuncture between racism and anti-feminism as a political project, focusing particularly on how anti-feminist agendas act upon notions of trygghet (safety) and connects these to a nationalist and racist agenda. The article also explores the diverse ways in which self-identified antiracist feminists, many of them with migrant backgrounds and/or identifying as queer, confront these attacks and struggle for alternative understandings of safety that transcend hetero-patriarchal and ethno-nationalist agendas.
Prison population rates in many European countries have increased until the beginning of the 21st century. Prison overcrowding and questions around the ‘New Punitiveness’ have dominated the discourse. Recently a remarkable drop in prison population rates can be observed, in particular in Central and East European countries (for example, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic states), but also in West European jurisdictions (the Netherlands, Germany and, in the last few years, also Spain). Explanations are not always easy and in most cases this is not the result of a strategic policy but more likely of a sharp decrease in (serious) crime rates. The paper discusses the developments in a European comparative perspective and explores the potentials for a further reduction in prison population rates.
The paper explores the discursive strategies used by participants of Polish nationalist (radical right) organizations when they speak about others: Muslims and homosexuals. The article is based on the critical discourse analysis of 30 biographical narrative interviews with the members of three main Polish nationalist organizations: the National Radical Camp (ONR), the National Rebirth of Poland (NOP), and the All-Polish Youth (MW). Following the reconstruction of more general ways in which various categories of others are discursively constructed by narrators, the body of the paper focuses on two categories, Muslims and homosexuals, which appear most often in the narratives collected. The nationalists present themselves as the concerned defenders of both the European civilization as well as the Polish identity based on components such as religion (seen as the source of morality), tradition and history. Others are presented as a threat because of their otherness, claims and aspirations for power and dominance attributed to them. While Muslims constitute the embodiment of a cultural enemy who threatens the European (Christian) civilization, homosexuals are identified with liberalism seen as the danger destroying Polish identity and the traditional family.
In this article, we present and discuss the intended and unintended effects of the Swedish Sex Purchase Act, which criminalises the purchase of sex within a context where the sale of sex is legal. Whether or not this means of regulating prostitution is successful, and whether it has negative consequences for people who sell sex, are important questions in international policy and academic debates. This article builds on a scoping study aimed at identifying relevant sources of information as to the consequences of the Swedish Sex Purchase Act, then summarising and discussing these findings. The article offers policy makers and scholars a comprehensive presentation of the evidence and a discussion of the methodological, political and theoretical challenges arising from this.
Key words: Prostitution, Human Trafficking, Law in Action, Sweden
The aim of this article is to offer a comprehensive analysis of the European Union’s neo-abolitionist approach to prostitution, drawing on the literature that addresses the global rise of neo-abolitionism and using key concepts developed by the gendered approaches to the European Union in order to adapt them to the particular context of the European Union. To do so, the article undertakes a critical frame analysis of the European Union’s violence against women policies, as it is in such policies that prostitution has been most thoroughly addressed, in combination with an analysis of the nature and evolution of the European Union’s gender equality policies more broadly. The article contends that the emergence of prostitution on the gender equality agenda of the European Union and the adoption of an explicit neo-abolitionist approach by the European Parliament can be explained by the coalescence, in the mid 1990s, of three key factors: Sweden’s accession to the European Union and the consequent positioning of Swedish femocrats, keen on exporting Sweden’s neo-abolitionist agenda to the European Union, in central positions of power within European Union institutions; the crystallisation of a robust neo-abolitionist velvet triangle through the creation of strong institutional links between the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Women’s Lobby, which remained unchallenged; and the gradual development of a hybrid model of gender equality in the European Union which resonates with neo-abolitionist ideals at the same time as neo-abolitionism itself was increasingly associated to gender equality as a fundamental European Union value.
This volume has examined the state of the art in European integration theorizing with chapters which have presented and reflected upon the core theoretical contributions that have been developed since the early stages of studying European integration and governance. This concluding chapter provides a historical overview of the type and focus of each theoretical approach to European integration. It compares the respective strengths and weaknesses of each approach according to the definitions of ‘theorizing’ and ‘integration’ developed in the introduction. It also considers the first edition’s outlook on constitutional development and identifies current challenges that lie ahead. It argues that the different theoretical perspectives discussed in this edition demonstrate an emerging robustness of European integration theory. It suggests that the variation in approaching the respective ‘test cases’ of European enlargement reveals the need for both rigorously prescriptive and normative approaches to European integration.
This chapter examines the European Union’s capacity to govern effectively. It argues that the creation of governance capacity for the institutions within the EU is the goal of much of the process of integration. While European integration is to some extent an end in itself, it may also be the means for attaining the capacity to govern a large territory with complex economic and social structures. The chapter first explains what governance is before discussing various criticisms levelled against it and how governance works in Europe. It then outlines a number of propositions about European governance, focusing on multilevel governance, the role of governance in output legitimization, and the claim that European governance remains undemocratic, is highly segmented, and is transforming. The chapter proceeds by looking at changes in European governance styles and policy issues, along with their implications for European integration. Finally, it explores the consequences of enlargement for EU governance.
Has Swedish policy changed in terms of organisation (form) and content (substance) as a result of an increasingly consolidated membership? Based on the assumption that Swedish policy is part of multilevel governance at a local, regional, national and European level, the focus is on the interaction between Swedish national policy and the EU. In this book Swedish policy refers to the following policy areas: economic, agricultural, environmental, social, education, gender equality, asylum and migration, crime prevention, foreign and security, neighbourhood and development and aid. Every policy area has been scrutinised over time, from the moment of entry into the EU until today. The book addresses students at various levels, as well as politicians, civil servants and journalists with regard to how Sweden and Europe in general, and Swedish policy and the EU in particular, are interwoven in one political system.
The study shows that apprehensions conducted on the suspicion of a purchase of sex target men purchasing sex from women, regardless of geographical location or arena of the local prostitution market. This support and legitimise a present norm within Swedish prostitution policy, regarding who is buying and who is selling sex.
Findings
The results show that the three largest cities in Sweden have been targeted by the police, with a focus on a specific arena of the prostitution market in each city. Because of this, there are local differences in how the law is implemented, creating local consequences for individuals involved in prostitution. However, the results also show that gender and sexual orientation (i.e. heterosexuality) appear to be the two main factors for identifying individuals who are later apprehended on the suspicion of purchasing sex.
Application
As certain norms and practices are established and reproduced through the implementation of Swedish prostitution law, professionals within social work, particularly within initiatives targeting individuals buying sex, must consider how this potentially influences their work. In terms of whom they meet, what kind of help and support they offer and what may fall outside the present norm.
In the Introduction to this book, we discuss the wide variation in the impact of social and political environments on local LGBTQ+ activists and communities. Then we provide an outline of the content of the volume according to the three thematic areas: (1) Western perspectives and local context, (2) the role of the state in affecting LGBTQ+ activism, and (3) the development of LGBTQ+ movements in CEE. We explore various issues faced by LGBTQ+ activists, tactics, and strategies they develop and adopt in pursuit of their goals. LGBTQ+ movements in these countries have different level of development depending on political and social contexts. At the same time, some issues are similar, and yet so different, for many LGBTQ+ activists across the globe such as issues of identity, discrimination, and homophobia. LGBTQ+ movements of the region frequently experienced backlashes from the state and society.
This study analyses individual-and country-level factors influencing women's perceptions of the prevalence of violence against women in their countries. Multilevel modelling was used to study 39,377 women residing in 28 member states of the European Union (EU). Individual-level predictor variables included direct victimisation, vicarious victimisation, avoidant and defensive behaviours, awareness, and sociodemographic characteristics. At the country level, we accounted for an index of gender equality and the prevalence of intimate partner violence against women. The results showed that approximately 80 percent of women indicated that violence against women was common in their country. Most of the individual-level covariates were statistically significant, whereas the country-level indicators were not significantly associated with perceptions of violence against women.
In the United States, approximately one in five women experiences rape during college, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students experience sexual violence at higher rates than their peers. Given this context, many colleges are working to better prevent and address these assaults. This book takes up this social problem—how organizations talk about and respond to sexual violence—and considers it in proximity to a persistent theoretical dilemma in the academic field of organizational communication: How are organization and violence related, and what does that relationship have to do with communication? Guided by feminist new materialist and intersectional theories, the book examines one public U.S. university known for responding well to sexual violence. It focuses on the processes and policies that require most faculty and administrators, along with student–employees, to report sexual violence to designated campus offices, per federal laws Title IX, the Clery Act, and the Violence Against Women Act. Unfortunately, the university’s interventions in sexual violence reinforce other violent systems. The book illustrates the negative consequences of considering communication to be either separate from the physical world or indistinguishable from it. It also details problems with the notion that only individuals enact violence. Through its focus on two core ideas—communication and agency—the book encourages scholars to avoid wholly constructivist or realist arguments, and it shows the importance of questions about power and difference in organizational scholarship on posthumanism and materiality. The book concludes with suggestions for how U.S. universities can look “beyond the rapist” to generate more robust interventions in sexual violence.
Civil society organizations are involved in EU policy-making processes, but are faced with the potential dilemma of providing efficient expertise while at the same time advocating for their interests. This article asks whether the European Women’s Lobby, an EU-level umbrella organization representing women’s interests manages this inbuilt tension by empirically investigating the balancing of three different types of expertise-based claims (procedural, technical and normative) in a concrete instance of policy-making, namely the European Maternity Leave Directive. The analysis shows that while the EWL engaged in technical expertise provision, it infused the policy process with normative expertise-based claims.
Since the late 1990s, many countries have been debating what prostitution policies to apply, and, particularly in Europe, several have changed the overall approach to the phenomenon and the people involved. Prostitution is more than ever before firmly placed on policy agendas as a topic related to gender equality and globalization. Furthermore, it is seen in context with issues relating to organized crime, health, and gentrification. In both policy debates and the academic discourse, particular ways of regulating prostitution are treated as models and a central discussion is which model among these works best. In this article, I argue that this search for a best practice of prostitution policy that can be transferred to and work similarly in a new jurisdiction builds on a lack of understanding of the importance of context and implementation. How policies work depends on, among other factors, aims, implementation structures, and characteristics of local prostitution markets. But I present a broad spectrum of research to clarify what should be taken into consideration when assessing policies' abilities to achieve diverse goals. I argue that a fundamental problem in both prostitution policy debates and scholarship is that the arguments over prostitution policies have become too detached from the many and differing contexts in which these policies operate and I propose a way forward for research.
In this short article we will aim to do three things. First, we want to use this opportunity to reflect on some of the changes we have seen in the scholarly field of gender, sexuality, and intimacy over this period, and on new emerging directions. Second, we want to discuss the move away from discussions of ‘sexualization’ to a more critical and political register interested in a variety of ways in which sex and power intersect. Thirdly, we will discuss MeToo as an example of this shifted form of engagement, and raise some questions about its possibilities and limitations.
The paper employs a lens of reproductive justice (RJ) to discuss the events of the 2016 mobilization against a total abortion ban proposal in Poland. By presenting the context of women’s rights in Poland, especially the abortion debates, we argue that the 2016 Women’s Strike showed that taking a stand for reproductive justice was countered by governmental actions. By using a case study approach, the paper analyzes the Strike as a tumultuous act of women’s solidarity while simultaneously assessing its implications for RJ issues. We discuss the aftermath and the socio-political reticence to acknowledge the complexities of women’s lives and reproductive choices. Further, we provide arguments for applying the RJ framework into discerning the notion of ideal citizens and gendered social control in Poland. This localized analysis has a global relevance by reflecting the impact of worldwide trends in women’s rights activism and RJ in the context of resurfacing nationalisms and populism.
This article explores the representational practices of feminist theorising around gender and violence. Adapting Liz Kelly’s notion of the continuum of women’s experiences of sexual violence, I argue that ‘continuum thinking’ can offer important interventions which unsettle binaries, recognise grey areas in women’s experiences and avoid ‘othering’ specific communities. Continuum thinking allows us to understand connections whilst nevertheless maintaining distinctions that are important conceptually, politically and legally. However, this is dependent upon recognising the multiplicity of continuums in feminist theorising – as well as in policy contexts – and the different ways in which they operate. A discussion of contemporary theory and policy suggests that this multiplicity is not always recognised, resulting in a flattening of distinctions which can make it difficult to recognise the specifically gendered patterns of violence and experience. I conclude by considering how focusing on men’s behaviour might offer one way of unsettling the contemporary orthodoxy which equates gender-based violence and violence against women.
Based on a comparative analysis of the ideological and policy tools of illiberal ruling parties in Hungary and Poland, this paper makes the case that the 21st century Central European illiberal transformation is a process deeply reliant on gender politics, and that a feminist analysis is central to understanding the current regime changes, both in terms of their ideological underpinnings, and with respect to their modus operandi. It argues that: 1. opposition to the liberal equality paradigm has become a key ideological space where the illiberal alternative to the post-1989 (neo)liberal project is being forged; 2. family mainstreaming and anti-gender policies have been one of the main pillars on which the illiberal state has been erected, and through which security, equality and human rights have been redefined; 3. illiberal transformation operates through the appropriation of key concepts, tools and funding channels of liberal equality politics which have been crucial to women's rights. The article describes some new and distinct challenges illiberal governance poses to the women's rights, feminist civil society and emancipatory politics in Hungary and Poland.
The role of the international norms in domestic politics is a central question in international relations. This article examines the major international treaty on the human rights of women, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and its impact on Italian politics, specifically on domestic legislation, case law and civil society activism, and institutional structure. The research contributes to the general debate on international norms diffusion and implementation, and identifies the factors which enable states to comply with these norms.
In this contribution we reflect on our experiences of co-designing and coordinating two comparative projects on prostitution policies in Europe by focusing in particular on the epistemological workings underpinning their design and execution. We set out two main goals. The first is to shed light on what the epistemological and methodological issues we encountered reveal about the field of prostitution policy studies, an endeavor which can contribute to better comparative research in the field. The second goal is to relate the scope, developments, outcomes and expectations of the two projects to recent attempts to identify a “one-size-fits-all” model of prostitution regulation, and to interrogate whether transplanting it across Europe is a desirable outcome. Building on the lessons learned from the projects, we propose an approach to prostitution policy development that is reflective of the specific contexts within which the policies are meant to be applied.
New Zealand was the first country in the world to decriminalise all sectors of sex work. This book provides an in-depth look at New Zealand’s experience of decriminalisation. It provides first-hand views and experiences of this policy from the point of view of those involved in the sex industry, as well as people involved in developing, implementing, researching and reviewing the policies. Presenting an example of radical legal reform in an area of current policy debate it will be of interest to academics, researchers and postgraduates as well as policy makers and activists. © The Policy Press 2010 and Chapter Eight: Ministry of Justice, New Zealand.