Elżbieta Korolczuk will present her new book, co-authored with Agnieszka Graff, Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Moment, which charts the new phase of global struggles around gender equality and sexual democracy: the ultraconservative mobilization against “gender ideology” and feminist efforts to counteract it. It argues that anti-gender campaigns, which emerged around 2010 in Europe, are not a simple continuation of the anti-feminist backlash dating back to the 1970s, but part of a new political configuration. The book offers a novel conceptualization of the relationship between the ultraconservative anti-gender movement and right-wing populist parties, examining the opportunistic synergy between these actors. The authors map the anti-gender campaigns as a global movement, putting the Polish case in a comparative perspective. They show that the anti-gender rhetoric is best understood as a reactionary critique of neoliberalism as a socio-cultural formation. The book also studies the recent wave of feminist mass mobilizations, viewing the transnational revolt of women as a left populist movement.
Speaker:
Elżbieta Korolczuk is an Associate professor in sociology working at Södertörn University in Stockholm and at American Studies Center, University of Warsaw. Her research interests involve gender, social movements, civil society and reproduction. She co-edited Civil Society Revisited: Lessons from Poland (Berghahn Books, 2017) and Rebellious Parents. Parental Movements in Central-Eastern Europe and Russia (Indiana University Press, 2017). Her most recent publications include a monograph Matki i córki we współczesnej Polsce [Mothers and daughters in contemporary Poland] published by Universitas in 2019, and an edited volume Bunt kobiet. Czarne Protesty i Strajki Kobiet [Women’s Rebellion. Black Protests and Women’s Strikes], published by European Solidarity Centre in 2019.
Moderator:
Marlene Laruelle, Ph.D., is Director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies; Director of the Central Asia Program; Director of the Illiberalism Studies Program; Co-Director of PONARS Eurasia; and Research Professor of International Affairs at The George Washington University. She works on political, social, and cultural changes in the post-Soviet space. Marlene’s research explores the transformations of nationalist and conservative ideologies in Russia, nationhood construction in Central Asia, as well as the development of Russia’s Arctic regions.