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Book launch: Gender and Democracy

12.00-13.00, October 7

Participants: Eva Fodor (CEU/DI), Andrea Krizsan (CEU/DI), Conny Roggeband (University of Amsterdam)
Moderator: Matthijs Bogaards (CEU/DI)

The event will introduce and discuss two books: The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary by Eva Fodor, and Politicizing Gender and Democracy in Context of the Istanbul Convention by Andrea Krizsan and Conny Roggeband.

The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary (forthcoming in November, 2021, Palgrave MacMillan) explains a new type of political order that emerged in Hungary in 2010: a form of authoritarian capitalism with an anti-liberal political and social agenda. The author analyzes an important part of this agenda that directly targets gender relations through a set of policies, political practice and discourse—what she calls “carefare.” The book reveals how this is the anti-liberal response to the crisis-of-care problem and establishes how a state carefare regime disciplines women into doing an increasing amount of paid and unpaid work without fair remuneration. Eva Fodor analyzes elements of this regime in depth and contrasts it to other social policy ideal-types, demonstrating how carefare is not only a set of policies targeting women, but an integral element of anti-liberal rule that can be seen emerging globally.

Politicizing Gender and Democracy in the Context of the Istanbul Convention (2021, Palgrave MacMillan) 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.

Watch the panel here

About the speakers:
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Eva Fodor
Eva Fodor is Professor of Gender Studies and is currently the Co-Director of the CEU Democracy Institute. She has a Ph.D. in Sociology and works in the field of comparative social inequalities. She is interested in how and why gender differences in the labor market and the welfare state are constructed and reconstructed in different societies.  Her first book, “Working Difference: Women's Working Lives in Hungary and Austria, 1945-1995" (Duke UP, 2003) compares the organizing principles and everyday practices of state socialist and capitalist gender regimes.   Other research includes gender differences in poverty in post-communist EU countries, the motherhood penalty in CEE labor markets and the impact of COVID-19 in the division of care work. 
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Andrea Krizsan
Andrea Krizsan is Senior Research Fellow at the CEU Democracy Institute and Professor at the School of Public Policy and the Gender Studies Department and has a PhD in Political Science from CEU. She is interested in understanding policy change in countries of Central and Eastern Europe. She works on different equality policy fields including gender equality policy, policies on gender-based violence, policies addressing ethnic inequalities and intersectionality. Her current research aims to analyse the politics of policy backsliding in times of crisis and illiberal democracy and forms of resistance to such reversal. Her most recent book was on opposition to the Istanbul Convention and its consequences. She is the recipient of the inaugural Emma Goldman Award for her substantial contributions to the study of feminist and inequality issues in Europe. 
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Conny Roggeband
Conny Roggeband is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam and board member of the Amsterdam Research Center on Gender and Sexuality. She has written extensively on the politicization of gender-based violence, equality policies, social movements and transnational feminist networking based on research conducted in the Netherlands, Spain and Latin America.  She is a member of the Amsterdam Research Center on Gender and Sexuality, and co-authored The Gender Politics of Domestic Violence. Feminists Engaging the State in Central and Eastern Europe. Her current work focuses on the implications of democratic backsliding for gender equality policies and feminist activism in Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America.
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Matthijs Bogaards
Matthijs Bogaards is associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the Central European University. He joined from Jacobs University Bremen, where he was full professor of Political Science. A graduate from Leiden University, the Netherlands, and the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, Matthijs has studied and worked internationally for the past twenty-five years. He has published widely on political parties and electoral systems in comparative perspective, on measuring democracy, and on the challenge of democracy in divided societies. His current research focuses on terrorism, de-democratization, and consociational forms of power sharing.

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