Conservative Counter-Movements? Overcoming Culturalising Interpretations of Right-Wing Mobilizations Against ‘Gender Ideology’

Kováts, Eszter

doi:10.3224/feminapolitica.v27i1.07

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Consequently, the issue of gender quotas in the economy has gained in salience and has led to the implementation of binding quotas for boards of large companies in several European countries. Besides, it has polarised actors in the public debates with opposition posed by populist parties and anti-gender movements all over Europe (Chaperon 2015;Kováts 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Equality prescribed? Contextual determinants of citizens’ support for gender boardroom quotas across Europe

Möhring

Teney

2019

Comp Eur Polit

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We provide the first cross-national comparative study of citizens' support for affirmative action policies in the economy using the example of gender quotas for company boards. In contrast to previous studies, we focus on the contextual level and analyse how factors related to political institutions and actors, and economic and social structure shape citizens' support and the gap in support between men and women. We apply multilevel regression analyses of Eurobarometer data for 27 European countries. Levels of support and gender gaps in support for boardroom quotas vary largely between countries. Contextual factors related to existing quota laws, gender equality in social and economic life, and public opinion towards state intervention are important determinants of cross-national variation. Our results point to an ambiguous relationship of support for gender quotas and actual gender equality in a country. Citizens' endorsement of quotas is low in countries with high levels of formal gender equality. Support is higher in countries where interventionist policies are widely accepted. Also, existing quota laws are positively related to citizens' support of boardroom quotas.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Equality prescribed? Contextual determinants of citizens’ support for gender boardroom quotas across Europe

Möhring

Teney

2019

Comp Eur Polit

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“…This Women's Day march provided the Hungarian right with an ample opportunity to forge their own political capital. Hungarian 'anti-gender' mobilizing (see Kováts, 2018) gained momentum in last February and March when the right-leaning media, among them publications controlled by the government started to report that one of the largest universities in Hungary opens a gender studies department. Some right-wing politicians also wanted to stop the ratification of the Istanbul Convention by reasoning that it is the Trojan horse of 'gender ideology' .…”

Section: Context As 'Exceptionalism': An Extreme Form Of Universalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…19 19 Some of the members of this activist network wrote a response to our article on OpenDemocracy. They wrote under the pseudonym 'Gender ideologists' , which makes it clear that they do not understand the political space that shapes narratives of gender, since this gesture, even if meant to be ironic, gives legitimacy to the right-wing accusations of gender ideology (on 'gender ideology' see Kováts 2018). With their title 'We are not your case study' they claim the right to be immune from analysis and criticism.…”

Section: Context As 'Exceptionalism': An Extreme Form Of Universalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Progressivist gender-based activism as a means of social antagonism in Hungary through two case studies

Feró¹,

Bajusz

2018

Sociologija

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The endorsing of 'progressive' issues is embedded in the imaginary of the East-West slope. It is especially issues defined more in terms of recognition than redistribution and framed in terms of individual tolerance that have become emphatic signifiers of 'progress', 'Western'/'European' values, and thus the civilizational and moral hierarchy of the East-West slope. Aligning oneself with these issues (such as LGBT rights, liberal anti-racism, liberal feminism) on the periphery of Europe is a means of distinguishing oneself against the rest of the 'backward' country or region. As a strategy of raising one's social status it is a tool of social antagonism. We look at two case studies from Hungary to analyse how progressivist narratives are enmeshed in self-colonization. We conduct discourse analysis to examine how self-appointed advocates activate the West-East hierarchy as they claim to morally elevate society, and how this progressivist narrative feeds a populist mobilization that increasingly uses 'gender' as a symbol for corrupting foreign forces. We argue that representing social issues such as women's disadvantages as a matter of tolerance rather than as a deep-seated, structural, material issue serves as a mutual legitimating mechanism for the progressivist actors who accomplish it and the region's position in the global world order.

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“…My paper pursues the goal of expanding my former attempt to refute this culturalist interpretation (Kováts, 2018), demonstrating that this interpretation itself comes from this very 'recognition turn' and I propose, relying on Fraser's concept of 'perspectival dualism', a potential way to help us escape the false dichotomy of interpreting the phenomenon as being for or against equality, and for or against human rights.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Limits of the Human Rights Vocabulary in Addressing Inequalities

Kováts

2019

Intersections

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As early as 1995, Nancy Fraser problematized the shift of justice claims from redistribution towards recognition (Fraser, 1995). Since then, this shift has proven even more pronounced, displacing redistribution claims and reiterating identities (Fraser, 2000). At the same time, we can see how recognition claims in the form of identity politics became overall present in the social justice activism of the Anglo-Saxon countries, stirring heated controversies there, not only from the Right, but from Marxist, liberal and feminist points of view, too. On the European continent, these debates take the form of mostly right-wing movements mobilizing against ‘gender ideology’ and ‘political correctness’, portrayed as imminent danger coming from the US and/or the West. In my paper I critically engage with the widespread matrix of visualizing political positions and fault lines as being on two axes: economic (left and right) and cultural (liberal and authoritarian), and discuss why placing the attitudes towards ‘oppressed minorities’ on the cultural axis cuts the related issues from their embeddedness in material conditions. I point out that the cultural axes, the recognition shift, and the human rights paradigm type of articulation of injustices are going into the same direction, namely a culturalist interpretation of oppressions. Empirically based on the controversies around the Istanbul Convention (2017) and the Gender Studies MA programs (2017-2018) in Hungary and theoretically on Fraser’s concept of ‘perspectivic dualism’ as outlined in her debate with Axel Honneth (Fraser and Honneth, 2003), I argue that this culturalist interpretation both of prevailing injustices and of the right-wing contestations actually reinforces the cultural war framework of the Right rather than overcoming it.

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Conservative Counter-Movements? Overcoming Culturalising Interpretations of Right-Wing Mobilizations Against ‘Gender Ideology’

Cited by 11 publications

References 5 publications

Equality prescribed? Contextual determinants of citizens’ support for gender boardroom quotas across Europe

Equality prescribed? Contextual determinants of citizens’ support for gender boardroom quotas across Europe

Progressivist gender-based activism as a means of social antagonism in Hungary through two case studies

Limits of the Human Rights Vocabulary in Addressing Inequalities

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