Global Contestations of Women's and Gender Rights

Closing Conference of the Research Group Global Contestations of Women's and Gender Rights

Conflicts over Women’s and Gender Rights: Ambivalences and Contradictions

10 - 12 March 2022
Convenors: Alexandra Scheele (Bielefeld, GER), Julia Roth (Bielefeld, GER), Heidemarie Winkel (Bielefeld, GER)

In the academic year 2020/21, the convenors PD Dr. Alexandra Scheele, Prof. Dr. Julia Roth and Prof. Dr. Heidemarie Winkel (all from Bielefeld University) together with more than 20 fellows from different disciplinary backgrounds analyzed the specific mechanisms and patterns of contestations over women’s and gender rights in diverse contexts across the globe. This included a theoretical reconsideration of the causes and structures of gender inequality, such as global capitalism, neoliberalism, nationalisms, authoritarian states or fundamentalist religions, and the reconceptualization of notions of equality in selected contexts and empirically-based reconfiguration of struggles for women’s and gender rights. That way, the inherent contentious nature of equality rights and the development of equality principles as a globally contested terrain came into view – taking the division of labor, citizenship and religion as empirical arenas.

In the closing conference, the group wants to take a closer look at the central patterns and common – unifying – elements in the conflicts over gender rights, in order to better understand the mechanisms of contestation. Most notably, to address the ambivalences, contradictions and tensions between what has been achieved in the struggles for equality on the one hand and the current backlashes and attacks on the other hand. We start from the assumption that women’s and gender rights are claimed globally – despite or even because of women*’s vulnerability. We presume that the articulation of the right to equality is a central prerequisite of the present contestations in the various local conflicts and contexts.

The event will host as key speakers:

• Prof. Shirin Rai (University of Warwick). She is an interdisciplinary scholar who has written extensively on issues of gender, governance and development and politics and performance.
• Prof. Nadje Al-Ali (Brown University). She studies feminist activism and gendered mobilization, with a focus on Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and the Kurdish political movement.