Bianka Vida

Scholarship on gender mainstreaming (GM) in the European Union (EU) consistently highlights the disappointing implementation of gender mainstreaming. This article contributes to that discussion through the analysis of the first policy frame on gender equality in the work programmes of the EU’s Framework Programme for Research and Development, Horizon 2020, from 2014 until 2016. This article analyses how GM as a transformative strategy is contextualised by advisory group experts, and what is being achieved within Horizon 2020 work programmes. In opposition to the Commission’s rhetorical commitment to GM, this article demonstrates that Horizon 2020 work programmes exemplify a failure of implementing GM, further depoliticising gender equality in the Commission’s neoliberal context.

Since the outcome of the European Union (EU) June 2016 referendum in the UK, the possible mental health effects of Brexit on black and minority ethnic (BAME) people have not been fully acknowledged, despite the well-documented growing stigmatisation and violent attacks on migrants and religious and ethnic minorities. In the weeks and months leading up to the EU referendum, a culture of extremism and intolerance became visible in political debate in the UK, particularly on social media. The UN-expressed position in 2016 was that hate crimes against minorities were, at least in part, related to campaigning before the referendum.

In the paper, I discuss the case study of Irma Grese, labelled as the 'beauty beast' who was one of the cruelest and most infamous Nazi female perpetrator working in Auschwitz-Birkenau as a camp guard in the Holocaust history. I look into how Grese's figure is constituted through analyzing the trial testimonies of the Holocaust survivors from 1945 and the oral testimonies of the survivors, recorded between 1994 and 1999, available at the VHA collection of Shoah. In the article, I demonstrate that with the use of the combination of the different testimonies, it can be mapped how not only the 'evilness', but also the 'ordinariness' of Grese is constructed. As a result, I provide new insights on the general images of Nazi female perpetrators in both the public and the perpetrator scholarship in terms of two main aspects. One of them is the fact that 'recorded cases of female killers had been suppressed, overlooked and under-researched' and the female perpetrators in Third Reich 'were not marginal sociopaths' (Lower 2013: 4). Instead, I agree that the violent acts of female perpetrators were part of serving the Nazi party, thus, fulfilling the Nazi racist ideology (Lower 2013: 4). The other part of my contribution with the analysis is analyzing the 'ordinariness' of Grese. Despite her popular sexualized images in the public and even the scholarship, I aim to contribute to 'the new research directions that map out female perpetrators as 'ordinary' women which might be the first step towards getting a more individualized picture' about Grese (Pető 2009: 149).

Tanulmányom célkitűzése olyan új értelmezési szempontokon alapuló elemzés létrehozása, amely kibővíti, árnyalja és lehetőség szerint egységbe szervezi a Bethlen Katáról kialakult képet, az Önéletírásában létesülő alakját az elbeszélt azonosság ricoeuri elmélete felől vizsgálva. Bethlen Kata Önéletírásában az elbeszélt azonosságot társadalom- és irodalomtudományi szempontok alapján vizsgálom meg, hozzáfűzve női írásának jellegzetességeit.

The past decade brought a striking right-wing populist turn in Hungarian politics, just as it did in many other European countries and in Central Eastern European (CEE) countries in particular. The new political landscape obviously influenced policies on women and gender equality as well. The negative connotations of gender equality and feminism in Hungary – partly for historical reasons and partly for the lack of tradition in promoting and protecting gender equality – already impede the implementation of progressive gender equality measures. The 2010 electoral victory of the Fidesz (Hungarian Civic Alliance) and Christian and Democratic Party (KDNP) coalition came in the aftermath of the socio-economic turmoil following the 2008 economic crisis, which hit Hungary as a big ‘debt state’ hard. The strict austerity measures that the European Union (EU) introduced as a response to the 2008 economic crisis and the growing unemployment and poverty, high levels of household indebtedness, and weak economic growth capacities in Hungary all paved the way for the conservative and right-wing populist party coalition’s rise to power. As the government implemented a second transition from liberal to illiberal democracy as a new form of government and made its anti-gender+ and LGBTQIA+ agenda central in its politics and policymaking, I assert that a gender-sensitive perspective is essential for understanding the logic and mechanisms of the current regime changes. Yet, while scholarship on populism has been increasing in recent years, the relationship between gender and populism (Abi-Hassan 2017; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2013, 508), the analysis of how de-democratisation affects gender politics and policies (Aksoy 2018) and the analysis of the gendered aspects of de-democratisation and illiberal democracies (Roggeband and Krizsán 2020) – which is especially widespread in post-socialist countries, such as Hungary – have received little academic attention. This paper seeks to contribute to this discussion by analysing the recent law and policy reforms that the current Hungarian government has enacted in relation to gender+ equality from 2010 onwards. On the one hand, I argue that the government’s political agenda opposing to gender+ equality is informed by neoliberalism, nationalism, and social conservatism, which enables the government to redefine gender+ equality in a (neo-)conservative, (neo-)nationalist and heteronormative (neo-)patriarchal way with the help of state-led institutions, religious and conservative allies, and ties with civil society. In this process, I also unpack how the government has consistently exploited the different EU crises, starting from the 2008 economic crisis through the 2015 refugee crisis to the ongoing global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic to strengthen its authoritarian regime and to have a variety of bills, laws, and public policies against gender+ equality and LGBTQIA+ rights, passed by the Parliament. On the other hand, I show that the EU’s new economic governance that fails to address gender equality as a political goal since the economic crisis controversially secures a perfect breeding ground for the Hungarian government to increasingly oppose to gender+ equality.

Since the 2008 economic crisis, gender equality as a foundational norm of the EU (European Union) has increasingly been facing contestation and criticism from a wide range of different ideas and actors (Kantola and Lombardo 2017). As the EU has extended its austerity politics as a response to the crisis, this recent political and ideological turn has also been manifested in member states’ turn away from the social democratic notion of gender equality which gave a rise to conservative right-wing populist movements united with a common goal to mobilise against gender+ equality (Kovats and Poim 2015; Paternotte and Kuhar 2017). This paper seeks to contribute to this discussion through the case study of Hungary by analysing the recent law and policy reforms that the current Hungarian government has introduced in relation to gender+ equality in Hungary from 2010 onwards. On the one hand, the paper argues that the government’s political agenda opposing to gender+ equality is informed by neoliberalism, nationalism and social conservativism which enables the government to redefine gender+ equality in a (neo)conservative, (neo)nationalist and heteronormative (neo)patriarchal way. On the other hand, the paper also demonstrates that the EU’s new economic governance that fails to address gender equality as a social and political goal since the economic crisis controversially secures a perfect breeding ground for the Hungarian government to increasingly oppose to gender+ equality.

Since the 2008 economic crisis, gender equality as a foundational norm of the EU (European Union) has increasingly been facing contestation and criticism from a wide range of different ideas and actors (Kantola and Lombardo 2017). As the EU has extended its austerity politics as a response to the crisis, this recent political and ideological turn has also been manifested in member states’ turn away from the social democratic notion of gender equality. In this sense, the United Kingdom’s (UK) vote to leave the EU in 2016 marks a critical juncture for European integration. The paper reflects on this new context by employing a critical frame analysis (CFA) (Verloo 2005) of the UK government’s official documents so as to explore how the concept of gender (in)equality is articulated in the fields of employment and domestic violence policies from 2016 onwards. It argues that Brexit is introducing a normative paradigm shift from the social democratic notion of gender equality by further marginalising gender equality policies within the deepening neoliberal European political discourses and as a result, the UK gender regime becomes entrenched as a more neoliberal public gender regime (Walby 2015).

The EU COST-ECST workshop presentation discusses how gender is implemented in Horizon 2020 with a specific attention to advisory groups’ work and the framing processes of gender equality in the work programmes 2014-15 and 2016-17 and their programme sections in a comparative perspective.

Based on the work of Andrea Peto, Eszter Kovats, and Weronika Zuzanna Grzebalska, in this article, Bianka Vida explains how the Hungarian government uses gender as a rhetorical tool to strengthen its illiberal regime. The so-called 'gender theory' is a threat to any right-wing populist government, including Fidesz in Hungary. Starting from the Hungarian example, Vida illustrates how gender is exploited by right-wing political parties’ to expand illiberal democracy. What is the role of the EU in this illiberal transformation, and what will be the future of Universities proposing courses on gender studies?

The paper is also available at https://populismobserver.com/2018/11/27/gender-as-a-rhetorical-tool-for-strengthening-illiberal-democracy-in-hungary/.

Since Fidesz's party became the leading political majority in Hungary in 2010, 'illiberal democracy' has emerged as the new form of the Hungarian state. Bianka Vida argues that this new form of the state is, overall, a new gender regime, by critiquing EU economic policy and its approaches towards gender equality as having a major responsibility for securing a perfect breeding ground in post-socialist countries for 'illiberal democracy.'

2014-ben Orbán Viktor, Magyarország miniszterelnök bejelentette Magyarország új államformáját, az „illiberális demokráciát”. Egy évvel később az Angela Merkellel való közös sajtótájékoztatón kijelentette, hogy „a liberalizmus privilégiumot követel magának”, megkérdőjelezve ezzel a demokrácia intézményrendszerét. Ez azonban azon alapvető EU-normák nyílt megtagadását jelenti, amelyek az unió működését meghatározzák – mint demokrácia, szabadság és egyenlőség –, és amit Magyarország a 2004-es EU-csatlakozás során elfogadott. Mindazonáltal azt állítom, a mostani normatív paradigmaváltás általános demokratikus jogokban – különös tekintettel a nemek közötti esélyegyenlőségre – egy új (gender) rezsimet hoz létre a mai Magyarországon. Ez azonban nemcsak az EU kohézióját veszélyezteti, de globális szinten is nem várt kihívások elé állítja a különböző országokat – az „illiberális demokrácia” eszméi pedig elképesztő sebességgel söpörnek végig a világban…

When opposition to gender+ equality and LGBTQIA+ policies is growing both in Europe and around the world, with increasing attacks on gender and sexuality norms and violations of women’s and minority groups’ rights, it is crucial to further improve the feminist scholarly understanding of opposition to gender equality in times of de-democratization. The Gendered Politics of Crises and De-Democratization: Opposition to Gender Equality seeks to broaden the current scope of literature on opposition to gender equality in democracy, laws, politics, and policymaking procedures. This book focuses on nine case studies of opposition to gender+ equality politics and policies at the United Nations’ (UN) multilateral level, the European Union’s (EU) supranational level, national, and local levels. With its strong interdisciplinary and original focus on bringing together distinct scholarships as well as the variety of topics covered—from employment through sexual and reproductive health rights to gender-based violence—, this book is beneficial not only for gender studies students and scholars but also for feminist activists, political and policy actors, and anyone who is interested in achieving social justice.