CCINDLE aims to contribute to strengthening and re-invigorating European democracies starting from the assumption that feminist theories and activism are essential sources of both resistance to anti-gender discourses and politics, and to revitalizing citizens’ engagement with democratic institutions and values. We build on the recognition that addressing the increasing challenges posed to European democracies require a combination of excellent academic research and well-informed practical solutions which: a) are feminist, anti-homophobic and anti-racist, b) could efficiently support high quality inclusive democratic governance, c) may create a push-back against authoritarian and anti-gender efforts.

By conducting research in seven European countries with different social and political backgrounds, and at the EU level, the project aims to:

• Deepen our understanding of the state of democracy in Europe, especially on core challenges it faces in different political and social contexts related to the principles of equality, inclusion and participation, and as a result of anti-gender/anti-LGBTQ campaigns.
• Identify and analyze different feminist responses that are a) present in theories, b) worked out within feminist movements, c) provided via feminist cooperation with formal institutions to anti-democratic trends and to the anti-gender forces.
• Identify specific tools and practical approaches, which in specific political and social contexts could lead to strengthening democracy, gender equality, and intersectional justice.
• Facilitate putting these tools and approaches into practice to support actors that embrace the twin goals of promoting equality and strengthening democracy, through co-creating actions with selected movement and institutional actors, with feminist and pro-democratic media, with universities as prominent actors in the politics of knowledge, and with philanthropic organizations promoting democracy and feminism.

Political contexts analyzed are: Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, UK and the EU.

In addition to conducting the Hungarian field research, the CEU team will play a coordinating role in the work package on anti-gender campaigns, most particularly on knowledge production and violence aspects of anti-gender mobilizations. It will also play a central role in the comparative research on democratic innovations by feminist and women’s movement mobilizations.