Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CCINDLE (CO-CREATING INCLUSIVE INTERSECTIONAL DEMOCRATIC SPACES ACROSS EUROPE)
Período documentado: 2022-10-01 hasta 2023-09-30
Gender equality is stated to be a fundamental value of European democracies, and, with all their flaws, gender equality laws and policies have been part of European politics for decades. Yet, while resistance against it is nothing new, an oppositional climate has increased in forms that threaten the principle of equality and achievements in gender and sexual equality. Formal and informal political actors have grown in power across Europe, actively opposing gender equality, LGBTQI+ and racialised groups’ rights. Their attacks and the discursive violence embedded in them, are dangerous and send a strong message of the supposed inferiority or even inhumanity of non-hegemonic and marginalised people, thus positioning them outside of the demos, limiting their participation rights, and the quality of democracy.
CCINDLE is set up to better understand anti-gender campaigns and how these are related to de-democratisation in Europe, and to strengthen feminist movement and feminist institutional responses to these. CCINDLE does empirical research across seven European countries (Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom) and at EU level, to keep track of the nature of and changes in anti-gender campaigns in these contexts, and most importantly, on the nature and impact of feminist movement and feminist institutional responses.
CCINDLE co-creates knowledge with key actors that are already responding to anti-gender, racist and LGBTQI+-phobic campaigns and other antidemocratic forces. Through different initiatives such as Feminist Democracy Labs, CCINDLE collaborates with pro-democracy epistemic communities, with feminist donors, feminist media, and gender professional associations to make democracy across Europe more resilient and inclusive, using its co-created knowledge to resist and debunk the antidemocratic project of anti-gender campaigns. Envisioning and imagining feminist futures building on theories and practices of intersectional justice and inclusion in European democracies is therefore important in CCINDLE's research to challenge anti-gender and anti-feminist movements and policies, strengthen those actors already resisting these, and protect and strengthen democracies in Europe.
CCINDLE’s main objectives are to identify and analyse feminist responses to escalating dynamics of anti-gender, homophobic and racist/xenophobic mobilisations in Europe, to strengthen and re-invigorate European democracies and feminist futures. We aim to better understand how contemporary feminist and democracy theories deal with these challenges, and how we can improve those theories. We also aim to be up to date on the actual nature of the anti-gender, homophobic, and racist/xenophobic mobilizations in the contexts that we study. In our analysis, we acknowledge the knowledge responding feminist actors already have and therefore use co-creation as a method. Our impact actions will support groups of actors that are involved, and co-create with them to be more impactful. Our impact actions will identify specific tools and practical approaches that could lead to strengthening democracy, gender equality and intersectional justice. In all our work, we have a goal of sound ethical behaviour, collaborative teamwork and ample dissemination and communication, and good tools for coordination, communication, data collection and storage, monitoring and reporting to the Commission.
CCINDLE is set up to better understand anti-gender campaigns and how these are related to de-democratisation in Europe, and to strengthen feminist movement and feminist institutional responses to these. CCINDLE does empirical research across seven European countries (Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom) and at EU level, to keep track of the nature of and changes in anti-gender campaigns in these contexts, and most importantly, on the nature and impact of feminist movement and feminist institutional responses.
CCINDLE co-creates knowledge with key actors that are already responding to anti-gender, racist and LGBTQI+-phobic campaigns and other antidemocratic forces. Through different initiatives such as Feminist Democracy Labs, CCINDLE collaborates with pro-democracy epistemic communities, with feminist donors, feminist media, and gender professional associations to make democracy across Europe more resilient and inclusive, using its co-created knowledge to resist and debunk the antidemocratic project of anti-gender campaigns. Envisioning and imagining feminist futures building on theories and practices of intersectional justice and inclusion in European democracies is therefore important in CCINDLE's research to challenge anti-gender and anti-feminist movements and policies, strengthen those actors already resisting these, and protect and strengthen democracies in Europe.
CCINDLE’s main objectives are to identify and analyse feminist responses to escalating dynamics of anti-gender, homophobic and racist/xenophobic mobilisations in Europe, to strengthen and re-invigorate European democracies and feminist futures. We aim to better understand how contemporary feminist and democracy theories deal with these challenges, and how we can improve those theories. We also aim to be up to date on the actual nature of the anti-gender, homophobic, and racist/xenophobic mobilizations in the contexts that we study. In our analysis, we acknowledge the knowledge responding feminist actors already have and therefore use co-creation as a method. Our impact actions will support groups of actors that are involved, and co-create with them to be more impactful. Our impact actions will identify specific tools and practical approaches that could lead to strengthening democracy, gender equality and intersectional justice. In all our work, we have a goal of sound ethical behaviour, collaborative teamwork and ample dissemination and communication, and good tools for coordination, communication, data collection and storage, monitoring and reporting to the Commission.
In year 1, CCINDLE has set solid foundations for the overall work.This is visible in timely submissions of Deliverables, and in preparations for research in coming years.
More concretely, we have produced a first theoretical positioning, engaging with the complex trajectories of European democracies from critical, feminist, queer and Black perspectives, to retell the story of democracy in Europe. Our theory Deliverable D1.1 is based on very intense work, involving team leaders, postdocs, and junior researchers. We have started the task on assessing feminist futures in theories.
We also made a critical overview of existing research on current escalating dynamics of anti-gender, homophobic and racist/xenophobic mobilizations posed to European democracies. Our D2.1 on understanding anti-gender campaigns, summarizes major existing studies across our 8 case studies. We have already started the process of updating and finetuning this overview for later tasks.
On what is the core of the project, the feminist responses, we have done a lot of preparatory work, setting out guidelines for data collection and analysis and starting the actual data collection. We started collecting data for the social media analysis on feminist movement responses and are busy analysing this. Also, the data collection on institutional feminist responses has started, based on Guidelines that were discussed at consortium meetings.
As a first step in our impact work, we produced a document on co-creation that will be expanded and updated. We also decided to pilot Feminist Democracy Labs sooner than planned, because of a growing ambition to start co-creation earlier. We have been experimenting with this in our consortium meetings. In Antwerp we used the take aways from discussions at the end of the Amsterdam meeting to pilot a new format. We have reflected collectively on this and will continue to do so to ensure further development.
To ensure good conditions for teamwork, we have hired a project manager, and local teams have hired postdocs and junior researchers mostly according to plan. We have a functional Teams platform that facilitates access to relevant documents, access to organizing meetings, and access to data about past meetings, such as a decision log. We have a Project Handbook with all relevant information for our daily work that is continuously updated. In three consortium meetings the team got to know each other and had time for longer discussions on complex issues. We started engaging with the sister projects to address common issues.
We have hired an independent Ethics advisor and received our first input on ethical issues, D8.2. Her first advise was largely positive about our efforts to ensure good attention to ethical issues through our first take on a Data Management Plan. We used the comments for updating this plan in D7.3.
In line with our dissemination and communication plan, we now have a functioning website at www.CCINDLE.org a series of 10 blogposts to which 13 team members have contributed, 58 interventions at existing workshops and conferences and 13 publications.
More concretely, we have produced a first theoretical positioning, engaging with the complex trajectories of European democracies from critical, feminist, queer and Black perspectives, to retell the story of democracy in Europe. Our theory Deliverable D1.1 is based on very intense work, involving team leaders, postdocs, and junior researchers. We have started the task on assessing feminist futures in theories.
We also made a critical overview of existing research on current escalating dynamics of anti-gender, homophobic and racist/xenophobic mobilizations posed to European democracies. Our D2.1 on understanding anti-gender campaigns, summarizes major existing studies across our 8 case studies. We have already started the process of updating and finetuning this overview for later tasks.
On what is the core of the project, the feminist responses, we have done a lot of preparatory work, setting out guidelines for data collection and analysis and starting the actual data collection. We started collecting data for the social media analysis on feminist movement responses and are busy analysing this. Also, the data collection on institutional feminist responses has started, based on Guidelines that were discussed at consortium meetings.
As a first step in our impact work, we produced a document on co-creation that will be expanded and updated. We also decided to pilot Feminist Democracy Labs sooner than planned, because of a growing ambition to start co-creation earlier. We have been experimenting with this in our consortium meetings. In Antwerp we used the take aways from discussions at the end of the Amsterdam meeting to pilot a new format. We have reflected collectively on this and will continue to do so to ensure further development.
To ensure good conditions for teamwork, we have hired a project manager, and local teams have hired postdocs and junior researchers mostly according to plan. We have a functional Teams platform that facilitates access to relevant documents, access to organizing meetings, and access to data about past meetings, such as a decision log. We have a Project Handbook with all relevant information for our daily work that is continuously updated. In three consortium meetings the team got to know each other and had time for longer discussions on complex issues. We started engaging with the sister projects to address common issues.
We have hired an independent Ethics advisor and received our first input on ethical issues, D8.2. Her first advise was largely positive about our efforts to ensure good attention to ethical issues through our first take on a Data Management Plan. We used the comments for updating this plan in D7.3.
In line with our dissemination and communication plan, we now have a functioning website at www.CCINDLE.org a series of 10 blogposts to which 13 team members have contributed, 58 interventions at existing workshops and conferences and 13 publications.
At the end of our first year, we have come to a collective theoretical positioning that shows how CCINDLE does not take a Western legacy of feminism for granted as a main point of reference and incorporates a more intersectional approach of current struggles on feminism and democracy. We are already starting to disseminate the insights from this collective output and have accepted an invitation to contribute with an article based on this Deliverable to a future Special Issue of the Journal of Gender Studies on “Conceptualizing two decades of global anti-gender campaigns. Transformations, consequences, and responses”.