Europe

This is not just ‘Poland being Poland’. These actions are illegal, inhumane and could spread across Europe – and this is just the beginning.

Rising antifeminist, homo- and transphobic politics of right-wing parties in Greece, influenced by the orthodox church, are threatening progressive achievements in the country. 

In Italy, a new Catholic movement is emerging, which is pursuing counter-democratic goals and giving a new dimension to the backlash.

The coronavirus pandemic – just like society – runs along fault lines of gender, race, class and other inequalities. With women over-represented in vulnerable frontline jobs, there are fears that technologies proposed to tackle the pandemic could inflict harms that differ based on gender. 

Right-wing extremists and konservatives try to blame the increased spreading of Covid-19 in Spain on the 08th of March demonstrations. Statistics dismantle this hypothesis as invalid and as antifeminist political tactics, with witch they try to hide the true cause of the problem, which is the weak health care system.

The change of government in Austria after the Ibiza affair on the one hand lead to a withdrawal of antifeminist (politically right) populist measures of the prior turquoise-blue government. On the other hand, existing structures of disadvantage and oppression have not been questioned by the successor government.

The crisis associated with the Covid19 pandemic has a gender, and clearly shows social inequalities of all kinds. It particularly affects women, as well as disadvantaged and variously marginalised groups. There are also attempts to exploit the pandemic for short-term political goals directly targeting women's rights.

The coronavirus epidemic exposes the care crisis and underlying class and regional inequalities — which the new strategy does not equip us to handle.

Poland was among the first countries to ratify CEDAW. In which ways has the convention facilitated progress - and what is the impact of the backlash on the implementation of CEDAW?