Three central triggers for the emergence of Central and Eastern European anti-gender alliances
Abstract
The anti-gender movements began in the West but have thus far been most influential and governmentally supported in Hungary, Poland and Russia. Anti-genderism has served multiple functions to entrench what proponents label as traditional values, while promoting specific class and racialised interests in the cloak of rejecting both the communist past and Western European political and social expectations. Why did anti-genderism develop and become pronounced in otherwise different post-communist countries? This article traces the origins of these movements based on news coverage and scholarly sources, arguing that anti-gender movements signal authoritarian trends and thus matter deeply for open, democratic societies. The Hungarian, Polish and Russian cases offer similar but distinct variations in the political trajectory of their respective movements, highlighting the feedback between conservative, expressively patriarchal, and populist forces and their embracing of anti-genderism.
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Biographies
Katalin Fábián is Professor of Government and Law at Lafayette College, Easton, PA. Her book Contemporary Women’s Movements in Hungary: Globalization, Democracy, and Gender Equality (2009) analyzes the emergence and political significance of women’s activism in Hungary. She contributed chapters to and edited Globalization: Perspectives from Central and Eastern Europe (2007) and Domestic Violence in Postcommunist States: Local Activism, National Policies, and Global Forces (2010). She edited, with Ioana Vlad, Democratization through Social Activism: Gender and Environmental Issues in Post-Communist Societies (2015). With Elżbieta Korolczuk, she edited and wrote chapters that appeared in Rebellious Parents: Parents’ Movements in Central-Eastern Europe and Russia (2017). Her most recent publication is The Routledge Handbook of Gender in Central-Eastern Europe and Eurasia (2021), edited with Janet Elise Johnson and Mara Lazda.
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