“Stop torpedoing women's rights!”: feminist institutional responses to anti-gender actors in Spain and Catalonia
- Programa:
- Sesión 7, Sesión 7
Día: miércoles, 24 de julio de 2024
Hora: 09:00 a 10:45
Lugar: DOMINGO DE SOTO (51)
Democracy and gender equality are increasingly contested in European parliamentary contexts, with the rise of political parties and movements that oppose feminist politics, women, LGBTI* and racialized people’s rights. The literature exploring far-right and anti-gender actors in institutional settings has focused on their discourse and impact in parliamentary politics and government (Kantola and Lombardo 2020, Alonso and Espinosa 2021, Kantola & Miller 2021, Norocel & Pettersson 2023). Yet, limited attention has been paid to the feminist responses articulated in parliamentary contexts facing the active opposition against gender and LGBTI equality (Cullen 2021; Kantola & Lombardo 2023; Caravantes, Elizondo & Lombardo forthcoming). This paper addresses this gap by exploring feminist parliamentary responses to such opposition, starting with the following questions: 1) What feminist institutional strategies are employed to respond to far-right and anti-gender actors in Parliament?; 2) How intersectionality inclusive are feminist institutional responses? And 3) Why are some parliaments more capable of responding to anti-gender anti-democratic opposition than others? We employ a multilevel comparison between the Catalan parliament (2021-2023) and the Spanish parliament (2019-2023) through content analysis of parliamentary debates and in-depth interviews. We argue that the enabling and constraining factors and forces within each parliament determine the capacity of parliaments to respond to anti-gender and far-right opposition. The varying degree of representation of the far-right, the gender sensitiveness and institutionalization of gender equality in each context, as well as the feminist and anti-gender dynamics of alliances within the institution and with civil society lead to differing levels of everyday tension and hostility around gender issues that affect the quality of deliberation and debates, as well as the capacity for responses. Through the identification of a multiplicity of feminist strategies employed, including ‘knowledge’, ‘coalition-building’, ‘rule-making’, and ‘everyday pragmatic engagement’, the paper will contribute to advance the theory on feminist institutional politics, anti-gender politics, gender-sensitive parliaments, and democratization.
Palabras clave: Democracy, gender equality, feminist institutional responses, parliaments, Catalonia, Spain
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