WOMEN’S AND SOGI RIGHTS
I examine the growing backlash against women’s and sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) rights in global politics, with particular attention to the status of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SHRH). I also research activist efforts to promote international women’s rights norms through local political initiatives and the role of cities in advancing gender equity.
In recent years, populist movements and regimes have proliferated around the world, pledging to uphold the interests of the ‘pure people’ against corrupt ‘elites.’ Among right-wing populists, ‘globalists’ and feminists are cast in the latter role, framed as dangerous threats to the restoration of national greatness. Meanwhile, alleged ‘gender ideology’ is rebuked, while women’s reproductive and LGBTQ equality rights are legally curtailed. We examine the convergence of populism and anti-feminism within the framework of patriarchal populism, analysing how proponents of this worldview coordinate across borders. To illustrate these trends, we focus on meetings of the Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC), a large and influential gathering begun in the United States (US) and increasingly dominated by the far-right, which is rapidly internationalising. Observing political discourse at CPAC Hungary and Texas in 2022, we identify common themes including advocacy of transnational right-wing coalitions, fearmongering about threats to the West, calls to control education and knowledge production, and bellicose advocacy of illiberal strongman leadership. Anti-feminism is woven throughout these frames, positioning right-wing populism as a significant challenge to women’s and LGBTQ rights in the US and elsewhere.
In recent years, conservative governments and their civil society allies have undermined international women’s rights treaties and SOGI rights initiatives and challenged domestic rights protections. The articles in this special issue grapple with these trends by analysing the ideologies, discourses, and strategies of contemporary anti-feminism in global and comparative contexts. Several prominent patterns emerge: the core significance of social hierarchy and biological essentialism to anti-feminist conservative thought; the polarizing demonization of feminists by religious conservatives and populist nationalists; the appropriation of rights discourses and advocacy tactics by anti-feminist campaigns; and the strategic importance of law and legal language as a terrain of rights contestation. Taken together, this research suggests that anti-feminism is not incidental to reactionary anti-democratic politics, but instead a constitutive element of political movements that seek to naturalize inequality and legally enforce conformity with conservative social norms.
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*Winner of the 2021 Best Paper Award from the American Political Science Association’s Women, Gender, and Politics Research Section
The rise of patriarchal populist leaders over the last decade has fortified a longstanding campaign by conservative governments and advocacy groups to undermine women’s international human rights. Their efforts have increasingly focused on revising language as a means to challenge and weaken the international norms and organizations essential to women and girls’ equality and health. Through textual analysis of United Nations records, governmental and nongovernmental publications, media coverage of disputes over language, and background interviews with activists, we identify and delineate the significance of this ‘norm spoiling’ (Sanders 2018a) strategy and trace its expansion during the Trump administration. Women’s rights challengers have pursued three distinct spoiling tactics based in language: first, controlling what health providers can say through policies such as the United States’ ‘global gag rule’; second, altering the meaning of women’s rights by reframing them as an attack on other rights, such as religious freedom; and third, deleting foundational words, such as ‘gender’ and ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ from international agreements. The role of language in patriarchal populism goes beyond populist leaders’ speeches, rallies, or tweets. To entrench norm spoiling, their governments and allies systematically control, alter, and delete words central to women’s rights.
pushback against AGAINST SRHR
US pushback against international women’s rights is led by conservative NGOs that have successfully captured the Republican Party’s domestic and foreign policy. In addition to blocking US ratification of CEDAW, activists, politicians, and diplomats have sought to prevent and roll back international recognition of abortion rights and the broader concept of ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ (SRHR). They have also criticised ‘comprehensive sexuality education’ and challenged the concept of ‘gender’, particularly insofar as it recognises sexual orientation and gender identity rights (SOGI). These “norm spoilers” (Sanders, 2018) advance several types of narratives to undermine human rights norms: religious narratives that frame women’s rights as unnatural and immoral, competing rights narratives that frame women’s rights as hostile to other human rights, patriarchal populist narratives that suggest feminism is an elite or foreign imposition, and pseudo-scientific narratives that seek to delegitimise established understandings of women’s health. Strategically, American spoilers have leveraged US power and influence by blocking foreign aid funds for women’s health and attempted to strip women’s rights language from international treaties, resolutions, and outcome documents. These patterns are likely to continue under Republican administrations and be reversed by Democratic ones. Actors seeking to defend international women’s rights should aggressively support long-established women’s rights norms and reject the radical extremist positions advanced by the Trump administration, increase funding for women’s health and rights initiatives, and support participation of women’s rights and feminist civil society organisations in international law and policy negotiations.
Women's social, economic and political equality and reproductive freedom have been rhetorically embraced by a majority of countries that have ratified international human rights treaties. At the same time, conservative states and non-state actors have waged a concerted campaign to undermine these principles at the United Nations. In this article, I trace the dynamics of what I call the strategy of norm spoiling. Norm spoiling is the process through which actors directly challenge existing norms with the aim of weakening their influence. Although utilizing traditional tools of norm entrepreneurship and human rights advocacy, it has distinctive characteristics. The reactionary nature of norm spoiling means norm challengers do not need to consolidate and institutionalize support for alternative norms in order to advance their agenda. Instead, they can frustrate and destabilize target norms through protracted efforts to block their development and diffusion. Moreover, because spoilers are united by shared antipathies rather than by a substantive vision of politics, spoiling coalitions are composed of unnatural and even counter-intuitive allies. Throughout the article, I document tactics used by women's rights spoilers as well as their impact on international treaties, declarations and related policies. Women's rights advocates would be wise to recognize these trends in order to defend progressive gains.
NORM PROXY WAR AND RESISTANCE THROUGH OUTSOURCING
A great deal of constructivist international relations research on norms focuses on the diffusion of liberal human rights values. In contrast, this article analyzes how critics seek to undermine human rights principles in contexts where human rights norms are increasingly hegemonic. It argues that when norm challengers are frustrated by the institutionalization of human rights, they engage in transnational strategies to pursue their agendas. In norm proxy war, actors patronize surrogates in locales where norms are weak in the hope that victories abroad will reverberate internationally and at home. This dynamic is illustrated by American evangelical sponsorship of political homophobia in Uganda, culminating in that country’s draconian anti-LGBT legislation. When norms are resisted through outsourcing, actors contract out human rights violations in an effort to erode norms through practice, as evidenced by patterns of extraterritorial detention and extraordinary rendition to torture in the post-9/11 “Global War on Terror.” Identifying these patterns broadens understanding of potential pathways of norm contestation.
Cities for CEDAW
Anne Sisson Runyan and Rebecca Sanders, “Prospects for Realizing International Women’s Rights Law Through Local Governance: The Case of Cities for CEDAW.” Human Rights Review 22, No. 3 (September 2021): 303-325.
How best to realize international human rights law in practice has proved a vexing problem. The challenge is compounded in the United States, which has not ratified several treaties including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The Cities for CEDAW movement addresses this deficit by encouraging cities to endorse and implement CEDAW norms. In doing so, it seeks to catalyze a local boomerang effect, whereby progressive political momentum at the local level generates internal pressure from below to improve gender equity outcomes across the country and eventually, at the national level. In this article, we trace the diffusion of Cities for CEDAW activism with attention to the case of Cincinnati and analyze its implications for advancing women’s rights principles. We argue that while Cities for CEDAW has potential to enhance respect for women’s rights in local jurisdictions, its impact on national policy remains limited.
CINCINNATI gender equity
I co-coordinated an interdisciplinary qualitative research team for a mixed-methods gender equity study of the City of Cincinnati. The study was authorized pursuant to a 2017 city ordinance and aimed to identify gender as well as racial and other intersectional inequities in local government policies and practices. My research contribution focused on the Cincinnati Police Department, particularly its response to gender-based domestic violence. The final report was delivered to the Cincinnati Gender Equality Task Force and presented to Cincinnati City Council in Spring 2020.
As part of the Cities for CEDAW movement, this research initiative seeks to fulfill the aims of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which the United States has failed to ratify, through local political advocacy and engagement.