Democratic backsliding and backlash against women’s rights: Understanding the current challenges for feminist politics:UN Women, Expert Group Meeting, Sixty-fourth session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 64), ‘Beijing +25: Current context, emerging issues and prospects for gender equality and women’s rights’, New York, New York, 25-26 September 2019

Trends of de-democratization across Europe and the Americas emerge along with opposition to gender equality and threats to previous gender equality policy achievements. Yet de-democratization is hardly analyzed through the lens of gender equality, and so far, efforts to systematically examine the implications for inclusive democracy and the representation of gender interests is fragmented. Backsliding in gender policies and on state commitments to gender equality, and new forms of feminist engagement with hostile states and audiences also raise new challenges to the literature on gender and politics. In this paper we propose a conceptual framework discussing two conceptually interesting realms: backsliding in gender equality policies and the emerging political space for feminist responses to backsliding. We illustrate our framework with empirical observations from four backsliding or temporarily backsliding Central and Eastern European countries: Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Romania. We aim to contribute to understanding gendered aspects of de-democratization and illiberal democracies functioning

Autonomous and/or institutionalized social movements? Conceptual clarification and illustrative cases

Case studies of urban squatting in the United States and the Netherlands, and the fight against sexual violence in Spain and in the Netherlands form the empirical basis of an analysis of the features and development of autonomous and institutionalized social movements, and the in-teraction between them. Autonomous and institutionalized social movements have different strengths that they derive from characteristics that are not compatible. Nevertheless, a dynam-ic is possible that combines the strengths of both models. It provides synergy between self-contained autonomous and institutionalized movements, without imposing trade-offs. Politi-cal opportunity theory suggests that such a ―dual-movement structure‖ is most relevant when the political system is selectively open. Interaction between the movements is conditioned by the mainstreaming potential of the issue or interest that is at stake. Even when relations are tense, movements can create opportunities for each other. Autono-mous movements are able to retain a repertoire of disruptive actions when lobbying is the more popular option. An autonomous movement can benefit from the legitimacy and support-ing network engendered by an institutionalized movement, pioneering work done by an au-tonomous movement can inspire an institutionalized counterpart. Autonomous movements can provide a critical voice when co-optation occurs