We are happy to announce that the new book of our Senior Research Fellow Andrea Krizsan and Conny Roggeband (University of Amsterdam), Politicizing Gender and Democracy in the Context of the Istanbul Convention, has been published by Palgrave MacMillan.

This book examines opposition to the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention and its consequences for the politics of violence against women in four countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The authors discuss why and how successful anti-gender mobilizations managed to obstruct ratification of the Convention or push for withdrawal from it. They show how resistance to the Convention significantly redraws debates on violence against women and has consequences for policies on violence against women, women’s rights advocacy and gender-equal democracy.

“We wanted to understand how the politicization of gender changes the policy field of women’s rights, what are the consequences of more confrontative activism for women’s rights advocacy and protection from violence,” Andrea Krizsan said.

“Studying the contention around the Istanbul Convention proved such a great lens to understand how gender is vital to democratic backsliding, not only because women’s rights are attacked, but also because the dynamics are gendered,” Conny Roggeband said, adding that “women’s rights activists are attacked, sidelined and excluded from political processes and no longer able to defend the rights of marginalized groups.”

Learn more about the book here.