17th Meeting of the Committee for Women- and Gender-Studies of the German Association for European Ethnology (dgv).

The latest events in Europe indicate that the politics of gender and sexuality is becoming extremely hostile. Many gender-related topics are (again) open for a discussion. In Poland, Hungary, and Croatia there are attempts to limit or to revoke the right to abortion; Gender Studies have been banned at universities in Hungary and Bulgaria; Austrian FPÖ/ÖVP government has severely limited the money for the research of gender politics. LGBT rights have been questioned in France and Italy, while in Poland we witness the emergence of the so-called “LGBT-free zones” and the diminishment of LGBT rights. With the rise of the AfD in Germany, gender imaginaries and anti-feminist discourses (believed to had been long overcome) gain more and more prominence, while the successes of gender democracy and the attained liberalization of gender relations and sexual practices are increasingly framed as threats. At the same time, arguments for gender equality are used to criticize immigration, while gender is used as a marker of modernity and distinction in Western countries as well as in post-socialist societies.

Gender seems to be a kind of a kaleidoscope through which one can study broad social, economic, cultural, and political transformations and upheavals. It is time for gender studies, grounded in empirical and ethnographic research, to engage with these transformations, their ambiguities and pitfalls, which often raise questions about the very paradigms that made them possible.

The conference aims to facilitate an exchange between scholarly disciplines as well as between scholars and activists from Western and Eastern Europe in various formats – expert panels, research panels and workshops.

The conference is organized online, as a bilingual (English/German) event, with time planned for discussions.

In Cooperation with

• LAGEN (Landesarbeitsgemeinschaft der Einrichtungen für Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung in Niedersachsen)
• GCG (Göttinger Centrum für Geschlechterforschung)
• KAEE (Institute of Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology Göttingen)
• dgv (Committee for Women- and Gender-Studies and Committee Europeanization_Globalization: Anthropology of Policy)

Gefördert aus Mitteln des Niedersächsischen Vorab