About this Research Topic
In the 1990s, feminism went 'transnational.' Transnational advocacy networks pursued feminist agendas at the United Nations and the European Union, and civil society-led women's groups mobilized solidarity across borders, leading to a range of almost unexpected successes. This transnationalization of feminism, however, also revealed some rifts that went through the feminist movement, exposing divergent needs between women, particularly between the Global North and South. In a different way, feminists have increasingly engaged with how gender-based needs intersect with other experiences of discrimination based on class, ethnicity, age, religion, and sexuality, which expose a variety of intersecting needs along different axes of inequality.
Due to the ongoing pressure and increasing mobilizing success of the feminist movement, gender-based needs have, over the last three decades, been increasingly influential in directing policy-making. For example, instruments such as gender mainstreaming have had a remarkable career and influence since its inception in 1995.
Regional and international organizations, governments and local governing bodies have thus increasingly engaged with responses to gender-based needs. However, feminists point out time and time again that gender-based needs are often considered more as a side-note or serve as legitimizing means for a government while pursuing other interests and priorities. This also means that while some aspects of gender-based needs, such as the gender pay gap, have been increasingly present in the media and political debates, others have been left to the wayside – notably those occupying minority women and men.
At the same time, and particularly in the last 10 years, gender-based needs have been increasingly politicized by non-feminist – often even regressive – actors.
While pursuing an antifeminist and patriarchal agenda, such actors have ‘discovered’ the emotional and affective potential inherent to questions of gendered body politics, leading for example to instances of what Farris has termed ‘Femo-nationalism’, where right-wing nationalist movements team up with parts of the women’s movement to justify racial exclusion through gendered narratives of discrimination and needs.
All these developments - the multiplicity and contextuality of gender-based needs, the political marginalization of some needs and the instrumentalization of others, and the politicization of gender-based needs for regressive and patriarchal populist politics – have been accompanied by a rich and growing body of feminist literature which have formed around diverse ‘camps’ of academic inquiry in social movement studies, feminist policy studies, studies of gender mainstreaming and feminist inquiries into far right extremism and populism.
In this Research Topic we want to bring together these varied contributions through a perspective on ‘gender-based needs’. Gender-based needs are political, economic, and social needs discussed with specific reference to gender. While we believe, in line with feminist thought, that all needs are to some extent gendered as they reflect the unequal distribution of resources, opportunities, and power in patriarchal society, gender-based needs are needs that are specifically identified as created through and/or exacerbated because of an individual's gendered position in society. We believe that discussing which needs are identified as particularly 'gendered' by different actors, such as academics, policy-makers, the media, or political parties, has crucial relevance as we attempt to understand how gender matters in different political and policy contexts. We therefore argue that such a perspective can help us to take stock of a variety of recent societal tendencies and create a bridge between different ‘camps’ of feminist academic thought. We further understand this perspective as a helpful tool to illuminate how and when gender becomes a political lens used to identify and address policy problems – as well as shed light on which needs are often left out of such attention and why, thus paying attention to the exact constitution of the power structure that surround the gendered perception and enactment of politics.
To enable such insights, the Research Topic invites contributions, which assess gender-based needs through different focus areas of 1) social norms around gender and sexuality, 2) material inequalities, 3) the concept of intersectionality and 4) political and academic discussions of feminism and the feminist movement.
While we consider this a broad topic and are open to a variety of innovative and timely interpretations, we particularly invite contributions, which focus on:
Due to the ongoing pressure and increasing mobilizing success of the feminist movement, gender-based needs have, over the last three decades, been increasingly influential in directing policy-making. For example, instruments such as gender mainstreaming have had a remarkable career and influence since its inception in 1995.
Regional and international organizations, governments and local governing bodies have thus increasingly engaged with responses to gender-based needs. However, feminists point out time and time again that gender-based needs are often considered more as a side-note or serve as legitimizing means for a government while pursuing other interests and priorities. This also means that while some aspects of gender-based needs, such as the gender pay gap, have been increasingly present in the media and political debates, others have been left to the wayside – notably those occupying minority women and men.
At the same time, and particularly in the last 10 years, gender-based needs have been increasingly politicized by non-feminist – often even regressive – actors.
While pursuing an antifeminist and patriarchal agenda, such actors have ‘discovered’ the emotional and affective potential inherent to questions of gendered body politics, leading for example to instances of what Farris has termed ‘Femo-nationalism’, where right-wing nationalist movements team up with parts of the women’s movement to justify racial exclusion through gendered narratives of discrimination and needs.
All these developments - the multiplicity and contextuality of gender-based needs, the political marginalization of some needs and the instrumentalization of others, and the politicization of gender-based needs for regressive and patriarchal populist politics – have been accompanied by a rich and growing body of feminist literature which have formed around diverse ‘camps’ of academic inquiry in social movement studies, feminist policy studies, studies of gender mainstreaming and feminist inquiries into far right extremism and populism.
In this Research Topic we want to bring together these varied contributions through a perspective on ‘gender-based needs’. Gender-based needs are political, economic, and social needs discussed with specific reference to gender. While we believe, in line with feminist thought, that all needs are to some extent gendered as they reflect the unequal distribution of resources, opportunities, and power in patriarchal society, gender-based needs are needs that are specifically identified as created through and/or exacerbated because of an individual's gendered position in society. We believe that discussing which needs are identified as particularly 'gendered' by different actors, such as academics, policy-makers, the media, or political parties, has crucial relevance as we attempt to understand how gender matters in different political and policy contexts. We therefore argue that such a perspective can help us to take stock of a variety of recent societal tendencies and create a bridge between different ‘camps’ of feminist academic thought. We further understand this perspective as a helpful tool to illuminate how and when gender becomes a political lens used to identify and address policy problems – as well as shed light on which needs are often left out of such attention and why, thus paying attention to the exact constitution of the power structure that surround the gendered perception and enactment of politics.
To enable such insights, the Research Topic invites contributions, which assess gender-based needs through different focus areas of 1) social norms around gender and sexuality, 2) material inequalities, 3) the concept of intersectionality and 4) political and academic discussions of feminism and the feminist movement.
While we consider this a broad topic and are open to a variety of innovative and timely interpretations, we particularly invite contributions, which focus on:
- How gender-based needs have changed in the context of current political crises, conflicts, and regime shifts and how this is mirrored (or not) in policy responses
- Varied perceptions of gender-based needs across geographical and political contexts (in Europe), including the potential of postcolonial and non-European perspectives
- Changes, rifts, and conflicts in the advocacy for gender-based needs within the feminist movement
- Current gaps and challenges in policy responses to gender-based needs at local, national, or international levels
- Feminist responses to the instrumentalization of gender-based needs by policymakers
- The reasons and consequences of the instrumentalization of particular gender-based needs (while ignoring others) by both democratic and far-right actors
Keywords: Transnational Feminism, Gender Mainstreaming, Intersectionality, Political Economy of Gender, Feminist Policy Studies, Social Movement Studies, Gender-Based Needs, Feminist Inquiry, Gendered Advocacy, Postcolonial Perspectives on Gender.
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
