Anti-Gender Politics and Democratic Backsliding in Turkey and Beyond

Speakers

Yasmine Ergas (Columbia University)

Zeynep Gülru Göker (Sabancı University)

Zehra Kabasakal Arat (University of Connecticut)

Barbara Sutton (SUNY-Albany)

Convener: Türküler Işıksel (Columbia University)

Mobilization against women’s rights, LGBTI+ rights, and gender equality (denoted “anti-gender politics”) has become a near-universal feature of populist, authoritarian and religious-conservative movements around the world. As they erode constitutional democratic safeguards of all kinds, these movements take aim at the civil, political, and socio-economic rights of women and LGBTI+ and seek to overturn the achievements of decades of local and transnational rights-based activism. Alongside seeking traditional legislative, administrative, and constitutional means of advancing their political agenda, they construct and disseminate alternative, essentialist narratives of gender and sexuality in a variety of contexts, including universities, civil society, and the media. Paying attention to the global ramifications as well as local specificities of anti-gender mobilization, this panel will examine “anti-gender” mobilization as both a symptom and an accelerant of democratic backsliding, and discuss their implications on gender and sexuality activism, policy-making, and the academy.
Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Panel discussion: 4:10-5:30 PM

Reception to follow

International Affairs Building 707, (Lindsay Rogers Room)

This event is in-person only. Please register here: https://bit.ly/GenderPoliticsSSC

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Political Science at Columbia University.