The Emergence of Powerful Anti-Gender Movements in Europe and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy

In recent years several European countries have witnessed the emergence of powerful social movements mobilizing against the enemy they call “gender ideology”, “gender theory” or “genderism”. Under these labels various issues are united and attacked by conservative, partly fundamentalist groups of society, including satellite organizations of the Roman Catholic Church: certain women’s rights (e.g. reproductive rights in Spain), certain LGBT issues (e.g. same-sex marriage in Croatia, France and Slovenia; human rights strategy of the government in Slovakia), government gender policies (e.g. ratifying the Istanbul Convention in Poland, gender-sensitive education in schools in France), gender mainstreaming as an administrative policy tool (e.g. in Austria, Germany, Poland), progressive sexual education programmes (in Croatia, Germany and Poland), or gender studies departments and their financing (in Germany and Poland).