Politicizing Gender and Democracy in the Context of the Istanbul Convention (Gender and Politics)

261 Pages·2021·4.167 MB·English

by  Andrea Krizsán, Conny Roggeband

GENDER AND POLITICS
SERIES EDITORS: JOHANNA KANTOLA · SARAH CHILDS
Politicizing Gender and
Democracy in the Context
of the Istanbul Convention
Andrea Krizsán · Conny Roggeband
Gender and Politics
Series Editors
Johanna Kantola, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland
Sarah Childs, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK
The Gender and Politics series celebrated its 7th anniversary at the 5th
European Conference on Politics and Gender (ECPG) in June 2017 in
Lausanne, Switzerland having published more than 35 volumes to date.
The original idea for the book series was envisioned by the series editors
Johanna Kantola and Judith Squires at the first ECPG in Belfast in 2009,
and the series was officially launched at the Conference in Budapest in
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with Johanna Kantola. Gender and Politics showcases the very best inter-
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tions from scholars - junior and well established - working in politics,
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·
Andrea Krizsán Conny Roggeband
Politicizing Gender
and Democracy
in the Context
of the Istanbul
Convention
Andrea Krizsán Conny Roggeband
Central European University University of Amsterdam
Vienna, Austria Amsterdam, The Netherlands
ISSN 2662-5814 ISSN 2662-5822 (electronic)
Gender and Politics
ISBN 978-3-030-79068-4 ISBN 978-3-030-79069-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79069-1
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Preface
In 2007, when we first started to work on the politics of violence against
women in Central and Eastern Europe, domestic violence was one of the
central concerns of women’s rights activism in the region and a policy
field that witnessed remarkable progress during those years despite not
being part of the European Union accession agenda and norms. Our
book on 10 years of gender policy progress (until 2015 when we closed
the data) and its limitations in Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland and
Romania came out in 2018. By the end of the writing process, however,
four of the five analyzed countries were in the middle of unprecedented
attacks on gender equality and its advocates. The Istanbul Convention
(IC) was in the center of these attacks, identified as a tool to promote
‘gender ideology’ and foreign imposition of norms. Croatia, Poland and
Romania ratified the Convention, but the road to ratification was painful
and has clearly redrawn the map of violence against women (VAW) poli-
tics as well as the political language used to speak about it in ways that
would have been difficult to imagine a few years ago. Attacks on gender
and women’s rights advocates looked frightening but also paradoxically
pushedtheprevious,remarkablytechnocraticdebatestowardsthediscus-
sion of violence against women, women’s rights and ultimately gender
equality. Given their extremely hostile tone, they also made actors who
never defended women’s rights or openly spoke about gender equality
to speak up and defend the Convention. The potential for new gender
equality language and reinvigorated activism with wider constituencies
v
vi PREFACE
seemed to be possible. In this book, we set out to look into how this
change happened, and what are its consequences for violence against
womenpoliciesandforwomen’srightsactivisminthefield.Istheconflict
andpoliticizationthatwewitnesssomethingthatinthelongerruncould
bring benefits to gender justice?
While the initial plan was to publish a so-called Palgrave Pivot, the
amount, richness and complexity of the data and the analytical ambitions
thatgrewalongthewaymadeusdecidetowriteabook.Thistookmuch
longer than originally planned, but gave us great intellectual joy and was
asourceofinspirationandresilienceandfriendshipinthedifficultperiod
oftheCOVID-19lockdown,whenwehadtodotheanalysisandwriting
without meeting personally.
Our work was supported by a team of enthusiastic women’s rights
advocates/experts, who worked with us to develop close to 100-page
country reports on anti-Convention advocates and their positions, on
feminist resistance and their allies and on what this all meant for VAW
policies.Eniko˝Papp,expertlawyerandmemberofEWLViolenceagainst
Women Observatory, worked on Hungary, Bulgaria, with the aid of
several interview subjects, and the policy parts for Poland. Valentina
Andrasek, expert, activist and also a member of the EWL Observatory,
developed the report for Croatia. Finally, for Poland, we used a variety
of sources: Dominika Gruziel’s and Marianna Szczygielska’s excellent
previous research was complemented by Marcin Marszalek’s work and
a final fact check by our friend and colleague Marta Rawlusko. Anna
Miskovska Kajevska provided rich data on the European Union-level
debates that we could only partly include in the book. Without their
thorough documentation of the process and devotion to the project, this
book would have never been written. Along the way and during previous
rounds of empirical research, we, or researchers helping us, conducted
around forty interviews with feminist activists, policy makers and experts.
Their critical insights into these processes have driven us in the anal-
ysis. The book honors the outstanding struggles for gender justice and
resilience of these activists and experts and their fellow sisters despite the
hostile, negligent or ignorant contexts in which they operate. We wish to
honor their work with this book.
During the period of research and analysis, several friends and
colleagues provided insightful and critical comments. We received
comments and feedback from Philip Ayoub, Yvonne Galligan, Maria
PREFACE vii
Bucur and Jasmina Lukic at the Council of European Studies confer-
ence in 2019 in Madrid, where we first presented a paper on the
topic.ThewonderfulGenderandDe-democratizationworkshopinBaeza
in November 2019 was another venue where we had a chance to
presentsomeideas.We receivedfeedback fromMiekeVerloo,BirteSiim,
Emanuela Lombardo, Myra Marx Ferree and Petra Meier. We presented
a first version of Chapter 3 on the actors attacking the IC at the ECPR
general conference in 2020 and received valuable feedback from Marian
Sawer,MartaCabezasandtheparticipantsofthepanelsession.Colleagues
fromtheCenterforPolicyStudiesatCentralEuropeanUniversity,partic-
ularly Viola Zentai, Anna Fejo˝s and Michael Zeller provided input on
anti-genderframes.UniversityofAmsterdamcolleagues,inparticularLuc
Fransen and Marlies Glasius, provided feedback on our argument about
the reconfiguration of civic space.
Afinaldriveandinspirationforpullingallbitsandpiecestogetherinto
abookwastheDecember2020UniversityofAmsterdamwebinar,“Push-
back against the Istanbul Convention. Why and how violence against
women became the site of struggle over gender equality in Europe.”
Our book presentation was preceded by talks from two prominent inter-
national experts and contributors to drafting the Istanbul Convention:
Feride Acar, former member and chair of CEDAW, the first chair of
the GREVIO Committee, and Dubravka Simonovic, now UN Special
Rapporteur for Violence against Women, previously CEDAW member
and Chair, and was skillfully steered by our good friend, colleague and
mentor, Mieke Verloo (Radboud University). The discussion not only
drove us to pull together the full manuscript by the time of the webinar
butalsoreinforcedmanyofthepointsthatwereemergingfromouranal-
ysis, and made us articulate new ones in relation to the vast transna-
tional as well as national experience (from Turkey and Croatia) of our
co-panelists.
Finally, three people worked with us in the final stages of developing
this manuscript whose help was invaluable and to whom we owe our
deepest gratitude. Dorottya Fekete worked with us as a research assis-
tant,helpeduswithcreatingmostgraphs,tablesandreferences,andwith
formattingandindexing.Sheorganized,checked,referencedhundredsof
resources from four different countries in four different languages, went
after missing or broken links, and developed a referencing system that
accommodatedthegreatvarietyofdatasourcesthatweworkedwith.And
she also cheered us on when we needed it. Thank you, Dori! Michael
viii PREFACE
Zeller, an advanced PhD candidate at the CEU came in initially as a
language editor to the text. The proximity of his research background
made the editorial process very smooth. He not only corrected language
but spotted inconsistencies, suggested additional sources and pushed us
tovisualizesomeofourargumentsandfindings,thusmakingourresearch
much more accessible. Moreover, given his methodological expertise, in
particular regarding the nitty-gritty aspects of the methods that we used,
which is well above the level that can be expected of any PhD student,
he also turned out to be our methodological consultant pushing us to
be more transparent, to spell out findings better, to detail methods in
ways that we would have not done otherwise. We also learnt a lot in the
process.Thankyou,Michael!Last,butnotleast,theserieseditor,Johanna
Kantola,hassupportedourprojectfromitsverystartandprovidedexcel-
lent input at critical moments. Thank you for being such an excellent
editor!
Our research benefitted from research funding from the University of
Amsterdam, in particular the Amsterdam Center for European Studies
(ACES), from the Central European University’s Research Support
Scheme and from the CEU Center for Policy Studies research funding
reserves.
Lastbutnotleast,wewouldliketothankourfamiliesfortheirpatience
withlongworkingdays,someworkingweekendsandendlessZoomnoise
comingfromdaily,sometimeshourly,meetingswritingthebooktogether
inanonlineworld.AndreathanksCsaba,LiziandMarciforbeingaround
and being funny and kind despite outstandingly difficult times, for lots
of delicious weekday lunches that we could have never had without the
pandemicaroundandforhelpingtosorttables,formatting,timelinesthat
I needed to ask about. Conny thanks Klaas, Zeva, Levien and Febe for
the great company, fun and support, but also constantly reminding me
that life is larger than work. Thanks dear dad and mum for your loving
presence. Thanks dear friends who helped me through these pandemic
times with long walks, coffee, meals and listening ears.
Vienna, Austria Andrea Krizsán
Amsterdam,TheNetherlands Conny Roggeband
March 2021
Contents
1 Contestation Around the Istanbul Convention
and the Questions It Raises 1
2 The Politics of Violence Against Women: Theoretical
Considerations 17
3 Opposing the Istanbul Convention: Actors, Strategies
and Frames 55
4 Resistance, Resilience and Resignation: Women’s
Rights Advocates and Their Allies 121
5 The Reconfiguration of the Policy Field: How
Opponents Appropriate VAW Policies 179
6 Implications of the Attacks for Feminism, the State
and Democracy 223
Index 239
ix