Introduction

Polish women recently took to the streets in great numbers to protest a legislative proposal for a total ban of abortion. In 2013, Parisians participated in an equally large demonstration against same-sex marriage organised by Manif Pour Tous. Both demonstrations had enormous exposure and their ideas travelled across Europe. Yet last week, inhabitants of the Western part of Amsterdam, including myself, received hateful flyers in the mail containing an anti-gay message. Although arrests have been made, it is still unclear who is responsible for the distribution of the flyers. Mieke Verloo argues that these forms of opposition to gender and sexual equality are not only multiplying in the sense that they are becoming more frequent, but they also become more extreme. Verloo links the increase in the opposition to gender equality to challenges to democracy in Europe.

Democratic challenges

Verloo argues that we need deep democracy to address the tenacity of gender inequality. However, the current course of democracy shows patterns of shrinking instead of deepening and strengthening. Verloo argues this is problematic in several ways. First of all, the rise of neoliberalism has advanced economy into the domain of policy, shrinking the area in which decisions can be made.

Perhaps even more worrying, the political power of organized religion has strengthened, forming a major source of opposition to gender and sexual equality. Even though in this day and age we are tempted to immediately share Islam under this category, Verloo argues that the political power of Catholicism and the Vatican are a primary source of opposition (and that the power of Orthodox churches for countries such as Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Serbia, should not be overlooked either). Besides, the rise of the radical comes with increased authoritarianist criticism on independent thinking. This development goes hand in hand with a decline of inclusive citizenship, and calls for restrictions on citizenship based on racialized features. Verloo argues that these challenges to democracy all share detrimental positive feedback loops, where weak democracies empower those actors engaged in further weakening it. It is therefore no surprise that opposition to gender and sexual equality is growing in frequency and strength.

Productive antagonism

Progress is always partial and never ensured. Gender is part of societal structures and organizations, of symbols and norms and of identities and behaviour. It is everywhere, and changing everything is an almost impossible task. Further complicating the matter are intersectional caveats in feminist victories. These victories have always only been for certain women, and we have to realise that some inequalities can be more salient than gender. Gender equality is a political goal, since even feminists are not able to agree on what it entails across the board. Verloo states that we need to organize spaces to discuss the nature of gender equality, we need productive antagonism and we need political theory. She calls for more feminist scholars to investigate the fate of feminism under the conditions of endangered democracies and for interaction between groups. We fail to learn from marginalized groups of citizens, even though they are right beside us in society, because of paternalistic ways of thinking. Collective action is needed to bring about change, and this only further emphasizes the need for deep democracy.