Mobilising in Times of Gender Equality Backsliding: International Human Rights Responses to Anti-Gender Discourse

In recent years, anti-gender mobilisations have spanned regions, including Latin America and Europe, spurring a backlash against gender equality and creating hostile environments for advocates and scholars working in the field. While these movements have been intensely studied in the literature, the responses from international human rights bodies to counter these movements’ anti-gender discourse remain little explored. This scant scholarly attention is surprising given that international human rights bodies have actively counteracted anti-gender discourse. This article discusses three types of counteractions identified in international human rights responses: assertive, defensive and offensive. It shows how assertive responses resist challenges by reaffirming the concept of gender disputed by anti-gender discourse; how defensive responses, rather than attacking anti-gender arguments, soothe and evade them by using a mix of reassuring and clarifying language; and how offensive responses confront anti-gender arguments by unveiling and condemning the social order that anti-gender discourse aims to preserve. The article further reflects on these counteractive responses based on insights from nine in-depth interviews with human rights/rule of law advocates and scholars working on LGBTQI rights and reproductive rights in two countries often identified as facing or having recently faced gender equality backsliding: Hungary and Poland.