ANTI-GENDER BACKLASH & DEMOCRATIC PUSHBACK

Informacje na temat projektu

PushBackLash

Identyfikator umowy o grant: 101061687

DOI

10.3030/101061687

Projekt został zamknięty

Data podpisania przez KE 9 Czerwca 2022

Data rozpoczęcia 1 Stycznia 2023

Data zakończenia 31 Grudnia 2025

Finansowanie w ramach

• Culture, creativity and inclusive society

Koszt całkowity

€ 2 168 131,25

Wkład UE

€ 2 158 756,00

Koordynowany przez

PARIS-LODRON-UNIVERSITAT SALZBURG
Austria

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - PushBackLash (ANTI-GENDER BACKLASH & DEMOCRATIC PUSHBACK)

Okres sprawozdawczy: 2024-01-01 do 2025-12-31

Podsumowanie kontekstu i ogólnych celów projektu

Gender equality has never been so high on the European Union (EU)’s and the United Nation (UN)’s agendas. While feminists across Europe and the world have achieved significant – albeit slow – progress during the last decades, we are currently witnessing a changed and changing reality in Europe and beyond: since the 2010s, anti-feminist and anti-gender gender discourses have proliferated, both online and offline. Gender equality is a precondition for democracy and as such it is also central to the Union’s existence and its future development. Against this background, our project proposes a solid democratic pushback against the backlash.

PUSH*BACK*LASH has five specific objectives:
1) To engender democratic theory from an intersectional perspective
2) To understand anti-gender discursive strategies and backlash tactics & assessing their effects
3) To identify best strategies for countering anti-gender discourses and strengthening democratic values and practices, taking into account the role played by parties, social media and public opinion.
4) To developing solutions, policy recommendations and context-sensitive tools for engendering democratic spaces from an intersectional perspective
5) To co-create and disseminating knowledge for gender equality

To reach these objectives, PUSH*BACK*LASH studies political actors, their agendas, and strategies that promote anti-gender equality in the European Union, using a large methodological palette – surveys, experiments, interviews, and focus groups, collecting data on public opinion, parties, government agendas, discourses on social media (X) in order to develop solutions on how to effectively counteract these anti-gender equality and anti-democratic discourses.

The project designs and empirically tests counter-strategies to overcome the pushback against gender equality and democracy in Europe and seeks to equip pro-equality actors with practical toolkits for responding to anti-gender equality discursive strategies and backlash tactics. Toolkits and solutions are co-created with civil society partners. Policy briefs and findings will be disseminated to politicians. Cartoons will be disseminated to schools to strengthen pro-gender equality and inclusive attitudes. Podcasts and videos are geared to capture attention of citizens, and theater of the oppressed interventions will be designed and tested to be used with students.

The project brings together civil society activists, EU experts, and multidisciplinary researchers from 11 universities and organizations in Europe.

Prace wykonane od początku projektu do końca okresu sprawozdawczego oraz najważniejsze dotychczasowe rezultaty

The project performed a multi-method multi-disciplinary study of the backlash against gender equality and ways to resist it. It used both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection and analysis. It has collected survey data in 8 countries and focus group data in four countries, data on political agendas in 10 countries between 2010 and 2022, X data for 2021, harmonized survey data, and experimental survey data from 3 countries. Additionally, the project exploited existing data infrastructure’s and produced in-depth case studies. Depending on the task, it either covered all EU-27 countries and the U.K. 10 or 8 countries, or zoomed in a few countries (i.e. Italy, Poland, Hungary, Austria). It produced 9 integrated reports, 3 infographics, 4 policy briefs, 9 newsletters, 5 podcasts, 2 Gender Cafés, 8 cartoons, 11 peer-reviewed publications, more than 20 conference presentations, several school workshops, 3 toolkits, one Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Course (BIP) on Theater of the Oppressed, 3 conferences to engage with policymakers, civil society, academic audience, and citizens.

Innowacyjność oraz oczekiwany potencjalny wpływ (w tym dotychczasowe znaczenie społeczno-gospodarcze i szersze implikacje społeczne projektu)

Results related to understanding anti-gender discursive strategies and backlash tactics & assessing their effects

Citizens

1) Comparative survey research from eight countries reveals that backlash in citizen's attitudes exists but is minority-based and context-specific.
2) Individual attitudes about the status quo of gender equality and discrimination remain remarkably stable, rather than showing systematic shifts or trends (based on the longitudinal survey data from Germany, Spain, and the U.K.) between 2010-2024
3) Based on survey experiments in three countries (Poland, Hungary, Italy), there is substantial cross-country variation in how anti-gender communication is perceived and evaluated, with effects depending on whether anti-gender communication is unchallenged or challenged by counter-arguments.


Political agendas

1. Through analysis of political agendas and in-depth case studies in ten countries, we documented that attacks against gender+ equality are not limited to overt policy reversal.
2. They operate through incremental, cumulative, and cross-venue strategies, often targeting implementation, administrative discretion, or policy framing rather than formal legal change

Online spaces
1. Based on netnographies in Germany and the Netherlands, both men and women politicians can experience gendered harassment online, yet the form perpetuates inequality for women and leads to reduced social media interaction of politicians, negatively impacting their campaigns

Best strategies for countering anti-gender discourses and strengthening democratic values and practices
Political parties

1) Based on in-depth case studies in 10 countries, pushbacks and counterstrategies for parties need to be multi-dimensional.
2) Their effectiveness depends on the capacity to coordinate across venues, mobilize professional expertise and oppositional experience, and sustain engagement over time, rather than on single events of mobilization or reform.


Citizens
1) There is no single best counter-message or strategy for citizens: the effectiveness of counter-messages varies by topic and country, and effects are context dependent.
2) Yet, calling out sexist and other hateful comments is important.
3) The backlash must be treated as an emotional and embodied problem and not as a purely cognitive one; this is where artistic ways of resistance, such as Theater of the Oppressed, are important to engage with.