For people in single households, living alone has become literal and absolute during the social-distancing measures related to COVID-19 and can lead to decreased health and wellbeing. In this article, we examine how solo-living women think, feel, make sense of, and practice COVID-19-related social-distancing measures and, consequently, physical isolation. During lockdown, we interviewed 23 solo-living women between the ages of 25 and 69 years living in Slovenia. We present three levels of responses to social-distancing measures: cognitive, affective, and behavioral. We identified dissonances between these levels of responses, and we learned that affective responses play a significant role in shaping one’s orientation toward and respect for the social-distancing measures.

Abstract. During a pandemic, it is essential that most people respect the measures in place so as to keep the health crisis at bay. Still, a consensus must exist in society that the measures imposed by government are truly needed, just and legitimate, with several factors affecting whether this is achieved. In the article, we present the results of qualitative research (23 in-depth interviews) conducted in Slovenia at the peak of the first lockdown, focusing on how the study participants (women who were living alone during the first lockdown) perceived communication from the government and the public health authorities that comprised the official crisis communication group for managing the pandemic in Slovenia. The results present critical mistakes in communication that shaped trust in the official communicators and failed to motivate and encourage respondents to comply with the recommended and prescribed protective measures. Keywords: Covid-19, protective measures, risk communication, trust, fear appeal, solo-living women

Anti-gender campaigns in Europe: Mobilizing against equality, edited by Roman Kuhar and David Patternote, consists of various subchapters with a common theme – the analysis of anti-gender movements that are appearing and consolidating across Europe. According to the authors, the movements’ common background is an opposition to the so called ‘gender ideology’ or ‘gender theory’. In these anti-gender movements and campaigns, ‘gender ideology’ is perceived as an ideology that aims to destabilize and even destroy social values that are seen as cornerstones of Western civilization, namely, the notion of ‘biological sex’, heterosexuality, family, and freedom. To formulate it differently, ‘gender ideology’ is perceived to be socially dangerous because of the effect sexual and reproductive rights, women’s rights, and LGBTIQ+ rights have on the taken-for-granted and privileged status of heterosexuality and of a specific family form, that is, family with a ‘male’ and ‘female’ parent (‘heterosexual family’). Namely, with feminist and LGBTIQ+ movements (where LGBTIQ+ stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer people) and their accomplishments throughout history, heteronormativity cannot simply be taken for granted anymore; moreover, it is destabilized to such a degree that its explicit and direct defence is made necessary: its common sense status needs to be rebuilt and stabilized by ‘unmasking’ what ‘gender ideology’ supposedly stands for and by revealing its ‘threatening’ consequences.

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The aim of this article is to gain insights into how feminist principles, content and practices persist in higher education in times of neoliberal ideology, post-feminism and the intensification of extreme-right wing politics. The main issue the article seeks to address is the state of gender-related and feminist topics in higher education. Their state should be addressed at the intersections of: 1) social context; 2) institutional settings (formalised and officialised gender-related curricula); and 3) intra-institutional practices, such as backlashes to and sanctions against feminist practices. In order to achieve this, we start by briefly sketching the beginnings of women’s studies worldwide, and the ambivalences of institutionalising feminist knowledge. We proceed by focusing our discussion on the contemporary social situation, significantly marked by right-wing politics and neoliberal ideology, aiming to constitute feminism as irrelevant on the grounds of an individualised ‘brave new world’, where everything seems possible, achievable and accessible. We continue by focusing our attention on the state of feminist topics in the context of Slovenian higher education. This part is based on document analysis of curricula of various universities in Slovenia (a description of their study courses and programmes: the research shows that gender-related topics are still marginalised within higher education as feminist topics remain rare and optional rather than obligatory. After discussing the barriers and obstacles facing feminism, we conclude with a discussion on feminist persistence and resistance in higher education: it is still persisting despite the backlashes that seek to extort a price for doing feminism, even if feminist practices are forced to take a more subtle form.