Conny Roggeband

Gender and its contestation are often at the center of the current trends of democratic erosion and illiberalism. Anti-gender campaigns run by coalitions of actors including civil society, religious actors, populist right wing political parties and sometimes governments, promote an illiberal, anti-pluralistic and majoritarian vision of democracy, contesting gendered, sexual and racialised minority rights, denying or even (violently) excluding minorities as part of “the people” and “the demos”. Preliminary evidence suggests this is accompanied by a rise of targeted gendered political violence affecting actors defending gender and sexual rights in contexts of democratic erosion. Yet, this suggested link is still understudied and undertheorized. The project analyses and compares patterns of gendered political violence in six European countries with varying levels of democratic decline to answer the research question: When and how is gendered (political) violence exercised against elected and appointed officials and civil society actors?

 Website: https://www.uva.nl/profiel/r/o/c.m.roggeband/c.m.roggeband.html