Since the early 1990s, the EU has increasingly institutionalized lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) rights and more recently started to use them as a symbol for its modern and progressive identity. This article investigates this development, focusing on EU actors and institutions. Combining a genealogical analysis with the analysis of current discursive struggles around LGBTI

Literature on transnational grandparenting rarely focuses on how migrant grandparents contribute to the work/care reconciliation of their adult children, how they provide and receive care in contexts of mobility and precariousness, and the ways in which this is shaped by migration and social policy regimes. Drawing on the concept of moral geographies of care, this study reveals how idealized norms

This article explores the production of problematization spaces at the intersections between gender and entrepreneurship in Spain based on two complementary analytical procedures. First, from a Bakhtinian perspective, the polyphony of the simultaneous voices concerning entrepreneurship of policy actors involved in entrepreneurship programs has been mapped. Second, the political axioms of entrepreneurship

This article reveals the trajectory of parliamentary debate on sex crimes over forty years in Victoria, Australia. We aimed to identify what might have led Parliament to support the introduction of restorative justice as an option for some sex crimes. We searched parliamentary records from 1976 to 2016 for debates on law reform for sex crimes that involved adult victims without intellectual disability

A common assumption in comparative family policy studies is that employers statistically discriminate against women in countries with dual-earner family policy models. The empirical evidence cited in support of this assumption has exclusively been observational data, which should not be relied on to identify employer discrimination. In contrast, we investigate whether employers discriminate against

This article explains the rise of neo-abolitionism in Europe with reference to the intersection that it enables between the gender and sexual politics of neoliberalism, vulnerability, and security. Analyzing the recent adoption of neo-abolitionist prostitution policies in the United Kingdom, Spain, France, and Ireland, it contends that neo-abolitionism offers a suitable response to the needs that globalized

AbstractThis article examines the politics of solidarity with and among refugee women in Turkey’s southern borderlands. Drawing on ethnographic research in Hatay, we focus on Syrian- and Turkish-led women’s organizations, whose solidarity work contextually entangles organized acts of care and support with social hierarchies, tensions, and mutual distance. These gendered social spaces complicate the

Although German mothers’ labor force participation has increased in recent decades, German men’s participation in domestic labor has not increased proportionally. Thus, mothers still face a “double burden.” We analyzed the total time parents spent on childcare and on various particular activities, such as learning with children, playing with children, basic childcare, talking with children, managing

AbstractThis article develops a new conceptual framework to understand silence and silencing with regard to conflict-related sexual violence against men. Based on fieldwork data from Bosnia–Herzegovina, it argues that rather than the silence of victims, the problem is that survivor testimonies are coopted and entextualized, and that male vulnerabilities remain inaudible. This process reinforces ignorance

AbstractIn the literature on morality issues, the most famous typology distinguishes countries from the “religious” and “secular” worlds, based on the presence or absence of partisan religious cleavages. Portugal belongs to the former world, yet in 2018, the Portuguese Parliament passed a law on the self-determination of gender identity. This article asks how such an outcome was possible, focusing

Gender equality indices are increasingly influential tools used for governance and knowledge production. This article evaluates the adequacy of the seventeen existing multi-dimensional gender equality indices and shows that all but one neglect unpaid reproductive labor to varying degrees. The empirical analysis offers three lessons for these indices’ improvement. First, that it is possible to measure

This article analyzes women’s own emergency preparedness courses within voluntary defense training Finland as a site of “vernacular security”. The article introduces a subcategory of vernacular security, “vernacular preparedness” to illustrate what woman citizens familiar with voluntary defense training make of security and defense policies where they are seen as key actors in producing grass-roots

Through the case study of the Slovak Committee on Gender Equality, a governmental advisory body, this article draws upon the growing literature on “gender ideology” rhetoric in Central and Eastern Europe to study the efforts of advocates of that rhetoric to gain access to policymaking structures. With the aid of narrative research, we examine the Committee’s struggles over appropriate terminology and

Why do younger cohorts in advanced democracies hold more conservative gender attitudes? Rather than understanding these attitudes as a “backlash,” I argue that these represent mixes of traditional and egalitarian attitudes that ultimately reflect the gendered character of family policies. Using an original dataset of family policies, I show that policies which alleviate care burdens and encourage workforce

This article argues that shared problematizations—shared political and public ways of thinking—legitimize policies and their outcomes. To support this argument, it examines the legitimation of gendered welfare reform in the recent U.K. context. Drawing on focus groups with the public, it provides evidence that the public’s problematization of welfare, specifically that reform was necessary to “make

Consensual unions in Latin America are becoming more common than marriages. We analyze the evolution of the laws recognizing consensual unions as well as those proscribing domestic violence, including patrimonial violence, for nineteen countries. While the formal property rights of married women and those in consensual unions are now similar, we show that the latter are in a more precarious position

This article is based on an analysis of the results of a survey conducted among 106 experts in the field of family policy in Kazakhstan in March 2020. The study results provided an expert assessment of family policy effectiveness in Kazakhstan and civil society’s role in it. The results show that experts assess the effectiveness of the civil sector in implementing the national family policy above the

This special issue advances feminist inquiry and theorizing of the politics of knowledge within our current, highly paradoxical societal landscape. It draws together feminist analyses of “expertise” with feminist epistemologies of situated knowledge, Black feminist thought, theory of affect and emotions, sociology of knowledge, and science and technology studies (STS). As such, it enables a timely

Although equality policies have been promoted by the EU in its enlargement process, their implementation often remains weak. Whilst normative resonance is considered as a key factor for their proper implementation, why it matters remains theoretically underexplored. Addressing this gap, the article develops the notion of the attitudinal panopticon. Through the analysis of the implementation gap of

AbstractThis article proposes the concept of feminist political epistemology to examine the changing modalities of knowledge production in Germany. The article examines how German gender equality policies have been embedded in and shaped by the shifting modalities of knowledge production and the remaking of the science expertise–politics nexus. The two formative time periods investigated—the 1960s–1970s

AbstractThrough an analysis of the Swedish government development program for gender mainstreaming in state agencies—the JIM (Jämställdhet i myndigheter)program—this article analyzes how gender equality is constructed (gender knowledge) and what role specialized knowledge (gender expertise) has in policy implementation. The article claims that even in best-case scenarios, such as Sweden, where intensive

AbstractThis article examines how gender budgeting (GB) activists in the United Kingdom have sought to practice intersectionality. It draws on Black feminists’ critiques of white feminists’ tendency to deploy intersectionality as a “cooled out buzz word” that relies on modernist, Western feminist epistemology. Results highlight the limitations of modernist positivist epistemologies, which are often

What happens when we focus primarily on violence as a central question—either within the gender regime approach or by making violence regime an approach in itself? The article first interrogates ge ...

This article extends theories on varieties of gender regimes by arguing for the significance of property. Drawing on the case study of Turkey, it proposes that gendered property ownership diversifies patriarchal relations of labor. This historical-sociology-based case study method is used to differentiate two forms of domestic patriarchy: premodern and modern. In premodern domestic patriarchy, women’s

This special section advances theorizing of the systems of gender-based inequalities from a macro-perspective by engaging with a broader world regional scope of historical and comparative analyses to reconsider the varieties of gender regimes.

AbstractApplying Walby’s model of gender regime, with some modifications, to the Middle East and North Africa, I highlight the importance of the family as an institutional domain, replace the ideal types of social-democratic and neoliberal public gender regimes with neopatriarchal and conservative-corporatist, and elucidate feminist organizing and mobilizing as a key driver in the transition from one

AbstractIn this article, we extend Walby’s analysis of gender transformations to theorize gender relations in conservative modernizations. We draw insights from a historical comparison of gender inequalities in Germany and Japan, to draw a distinction between conservative authoritarian and conservative democratic gender regimes, and their transformations. Conservative gender regimes, we argue, constitute

AbstractGiven the current polarization of gender knowledge in the public discourse, this article investigates the “other side” of gender knowledge production. Building on feminist standpoint literature, I conduct a close reading of the affective-discursive dynamics of knowledge production in two anti-feminist online communities in the United States and India. I find that anti-feminist communities appropriate

AbstractThis article focuses on the epistemic strategies employed by ultraconservative movements to oppose women’s reproductive rights and the ways in which the women’s movement counteracts these efforts. The core argument is that nowadays the opponents of gender equality and sexual democracy are seeking not only political but also epistemic power, producing a new body of gender knowledge. A detailed

AbstractIn 2016, nationwide protests in Chile demanded a major reform to the privatized pension system. However, experts saw protesters’ demands as not a viable policy option. In this study, I demonstrate how a group of free-market economists acquired authority as experts in pension policy by gendering their expertise. As a result, they have been able to deny, suppress, and dismiss knowledge on topics

This article aims to evaluate the political implication of post-crisis governance in the EU on national gender equality strategies and policies. It presents a study of recent reforms of the labor market in Italy, where the response to the Eurozone crisis has increased concerns over the low rate of female employment. Through an analysis of policy documents and legislative reforms informed by discursive

AbstractThis article focuses on the creative and innovative modes of negotiation that women in severely patriarchal societies often exhibit in their attempts to actively pursue their own goals in the face of risk. Based on group interviews with Bedouin women in southern Israel about their everyday lives, the research explores both the risks and the ways in which the women deal with them. The research

What are the varieties of gender regimes? The focus is the theory of varieties of gender regimes—domestic and public regimes; and, within the public, both neoliberal and social democratic varieties—and pathways to alternative forms. Is this model sufficient to encompass the turn to less progressive forms and multiple global regions or are further varieties needed? At stake here is the distinction between

This article applies Walby’s systemic theory of gender regime to Spain’s decentralized state, to capture changes in the gender regime. Locating the “hegemon” at different levels of government for each domain (economy, polity, violence, and civil society) and considering interactions between governmental levels provided a clear understanding of changes in the gender regime. The relationship between

AbstractScholars have recently documented inequalities in parents’ spending on children in the United States. This article situates these trends cross-nationally by using expenditure data from the United States, Australia, Spain, and Norway. The article investigates differences across countries in the links between household income, female labor force participation, and spending on children. The links

In several states, the universal gender binary has been challenged by the introduction of an official third sex. This article explains that paradigm shift in Germany by analyzing the successful introduction of a third sex category in 2018. Historical legacies of gender variance in the pre-modern and modern states are compared with the contemporary (re-)introduction of a third sex. I show that intersex

Are women less corrupt than men? Although research reinforced this popular assumption, proposing more women in government to reduce corruption, recently scholars have challenged it. Analysing the 2009 UK parliamentary expenses scandal using a gendered institutionalist approach, we show women office-holders’ propensity for corruption is context dependent. Male and female office-holders engage in similarly

Black women are disproportionately involved in the child welfare system. This state-level intervention occurs at two levels-a higher likelihood of being (i) screened for drug use during pregnancy and (ii) reported to child welfare authorities after delivery. Consequently, they face further enmeshment in state-systems, including custody loss and lower reunification odds. Using evidence from the past

Caught in the cross-hairs of perceived crises of aging populations, increasing migration flows, and social welfare sustainability, older migrants are often not welcome in post-welfare states. Employing a feminist border analysis, Canada’s relatively generous immigration policies on parent and grandparent entry are analyzed to show the ways in which older people’s mobilities are bordered, who is most

Older women are often portrayed as particularly vulnerable and in need of protection, producing processes of ageist “othering” that deny agency, foster “appropriate” behaviors, and work to exclude ...

AbstractThis article analyzes eligibility for parental-leave benefits in twenty-one European countries. It distinguishes four ideal-type approaches to how leave-related benefits are granted (in-)dependent of parents’ labor market position: universal parenthood model, selective parenthood model, universal adult-worker model, and selective adult-worker model. An eligibility index is created to measure

More often than not gender equality policies are good on paper but fall foul of politicized implementation processes. The reasons behind this are becoming a key area of investigation for feminist scholarship on the implementation of gender policies. This article analyzes the barriers to implementing gender equality policies in a corporatist regime. Focusing on the 2007 nurses’ industrial action in

Abstract Using nationally representative Time Use Surveys from Australia, Korea, and Finland (n= 19,127 diaries) we examine how parenthood and the age of the youngest child are associated with the recuperative activities of leisure and sleep, the productive activities of market and nonmarket work, and with subjective time stress. Time stress differences by fatherhood are greatest for Finns and least

AbstractWhether and to what extent the means of family members and familial care activities are relevant in the calculation of welfare benefits is often neglected in welfare state analysis. By quantifying qualitative institutional data, we analyze this aspect and how it has changed in regard to minimum-income benefits for persons of pension age and unemployed persons in ten European welfare states

Abstract:Recent years have seen widespread advances in women's legal rights in many countries. In other places, restrictions on women's autonomy remain entrenched. This study explores cross-country patterns in the association between gender-discriminatory legislation and various indicators of women's economic agency. We find that restrictions on legal capacity predict women's asset ownership and labor

Abstract:Research showing that there is strong correlation between increased female labor force participation and women's political participation is essentially based on empirical data from Western, democratic, and developed contexts. In this article, we discuss whether these conclusions hold for non-Western, nondemocratic, and developing settings too. Through a study of Ethiopian women's employment

Abstract Drawing on depletion through social reproduction and political economy of violence against women (PEVAW) approaches, we show how the context of violence intensifies the depletion of women’s lives as they labor to meet their household needs; and how this depletion heightens their vulnerability to violence in conflict-affected contexts and inhibits their roles in peacebuilding. We propose the

Abstract:Throughout Latin America, legal barriers enabling women to make a living equal to men are largely gone. However, women continue to lag behind men in gaining access to economic resources, and women's labor participation differs significantly across class lines. Drawing on a policy-based explanation, we argue that a primary reason why the removal of legal barriers is insufficient for women's

Abstract:A substantial literature argues that the legalization of the birth control pill in the United States reduced fertility and enhanced career investments. This study questions whether the broader effects hold across contexts. We use administrative data to study the Norwegian legalization of the pill and find effects on teenage motherhood but not on subsequent career outcomes. Using survey data

This ambitious and remarkable book provides us with a new, creative, and critical site for feminist scholarship and leads the way in producing historically and contextually specific empirical datasets and analysis of the deeply complex area of global women's rights. As is often the case with important work, the book engenders a supplementary set of hard questions to be asked both of itself and of the

This article explores the relationships between social reproduction, depletion, and geopolitical processes, drawing on two case studies–Iraq and Palestine. It underlines the importance of social reproduction to geopolitical processes and of particular geopolitical contexts to how states intervene in social reproduction, with differential implications for depletion. It argues that Iraqi state measures

Abstract:This article explores how working women in Sudan's capital negotiate legal constraints placing them under the guardianship of their husbands, imposing strict public dress and behavioral codes upon them, and upholding occupational segregation in the workplace. Upper- and middle-class women of different political–ideological standpoints see constraints as well as advantages with the Islamist

The second-wave feminist movement called attention to the endurance of discriminatory laws that deny women equal rights and opportunities. Since the 1970s, most countries around the world responded to feminist demands and reformed family law, labor law, reproductive rights, national constitutions, and the welfare state. Yet almost nowhere do women enjoy the same status, power, and opportunities as

Politics plays a crucial role in the construction of masculinities. This article examines the workings of political masculinities in Turkey in two categories: conventional party-related political masculinities and the emergence of a cosmopolitan masculinity. This article contributes to, and moves beyond, existing debates on hegemonic masculinity by bringing in political actors and traditions in the

When fathers are involved in caregiving from the beginning of their child’s life, they are more likely to stay involved, resulting in more gender equality between spouses and in positive cognitive and psychosocial health outcomes for children. It has been shown, however, that professional experts often focus predominantly on and build trust relationships with mothers rather than fathers. In this paper

Abstract:This article shows how two different subjectivities promoted by neoliberal discourses—that of the entrepreneur and that of the docile workers—are interwoven in the discourse of coaches leading employment readiness workshops conducted in a workfare program in Israel. Three main discursive strategies, "between entrepreneurialism and docility," "rehearsing employability: the labor market as a

Abstract:This paper compares claims making and gender wage gaps in the United States and Norway, and asks how public sector employment moderates the association between gender segregation and the gender gap in wages in the two countries. Using nationally representative data and hierarchical linear modeling, we analyze gender wage gaps within and between job types. The analyses show that job types heavily

Abstract:Child support payments extend separated fathers' male breadwinning role across households, likely fuelling fathers' perceptions of "unfairness". By examining fathers' written submissions to an Australian inquiry, we examine fathers' claims of unfairness, which were expressed in terms of gender inequality. Here, we show how fathers adopted a gender equality discourse that left intact the existing

Abstract:This is the first quantitative comparative study that examines the relationship between paid domestic labor and precarious employment on the microlevel. Using the Luxembourg Income Study 2013/2014, it shows that across welfare regimes, domestic workers have a higher probability of working in precarious employment settings compared to other industries. Furthermore, the overlaps of two or more

Abstract:This paper explores an overarching question that informs our understanding of political intersectionality in movement coalition building work: How do limited material resources affect the intersectional consciousness of social movements and the nature of their coalition building work? To answer this question, I conducted an expert survey to assess the intersectional consciousness of the European