Giving Feminism a bad name by Lorenza Perini

Author:Lorenza Perini [Perini, Lorenza]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Feminism & Feminist Theory
ISBN: 9788855265089
Google: dXNJEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Ledizioni
Published: 2021-10-20T04:26:18+00:00

4. The Polish case

The current dominant narrative on women’s rights in Poland is one of backlash and retreat. Classified 51st globally in the World Economic Forum’s 2015 gender gap report (WEF 2015), Poland is marked by serious gender inequalities. In addition to highly horizontally and vertically gender‐segregated employment, deep wage differentials, high levels of men’s violence against women and low representation of women in the Parliament, Poland also has one of the most restrictive anti‐abortion laws in the European Union (Wojnicka, 2016: 36). In the governmental institutional contexts, the promoted models of masculinity and femininity correspond to traditional and conservative concepts of male and female gender roles, consistent with the ideas of hegemonic masculinity and subordinated femininity.

This is especially evident in governmental discourse on women’s reproductive rights, education reform, the role of women in politics and recent discussions about the so-called dangerous rise of “gender ideology” (Wojnicka, 2016: 36).

The currently ruling Polish right-wing political party Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS, Law and Justice) began, in 2016, building what has been considered by some scholars as an illiberal democracy, a regime combining some democratic procedures such as general elections and a multi-party system with a neglect for constitutional limits to power and a crescent disregard for human rights and liberties (Grzebalska and Zacharenko, 2018: 82). The party has so far managed to consolidate power in the executive and legislative branches and is still leading the polls despite controversial laws dismantling the rule of law. From attempts to further restrict reproductive rights in 2016, to the defunding of several women’s rights NGOs, it has become clear that anti-feminist politics is one of the key tenets of the post-2016 illiberal transformation (Grzebalska and Zacharenko, 2018: 83). All illiberal right-wing political forces in the country openly denounce feminism and the liberal equality paradigm.

In the following paragraphs, Polish institutional anti-feminism is going to be analysed through four macro-areas: from a general assessment of the institutional framework, I will move to more the specific areas of sexual and reproductive rights, anti-genderism ideology and men’s rights groups’ activism.

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