As Part of the Panel: A Bleak Reality: Twenty-First Century and Afghan Women

This presentation aims to provide a nuanced and comprehensive overview of the realities faced by Afghan women in Afghanistan. In addition, the presentation seeks to raise awareness about the urgent need for sustained global attention and collaborative efforts to support Afghan women in reclaiming their rights to education, employment, and social freedoms despite the challenging circumstances they face. The focus is on the constraints imposed on girls’ education, the restrictions on women in the workforce, and the curtailment of social freedoms. After the presentation, the panel is also open for a moderated discussion about a more broadly gender-sensitive perspective on the situation in Afghanistan and Germany.

Keynote: Decolonizing Gender and Sexuality

This talk, in a first section, engages with the colonial and global capitalist imposition of dominant global northern concepts of gender and sexuality across the global south(s). In a second section, the talk addresses hegemonic and subaltern definitions of, and practices relative to, gender and sexuality that abound today. Finally, in a third section the talk discusses present movements and activisms for decolonizing gender and sexuality, via a focus on some queer activist groups and movements – in France, England, Morocco, Uganda – that are part of the Decolonizing Sexualities Network.

Panel Moderation: Body Politics: Conflicts over Abortion between Western and Eastern Europe

Moderation of the Roundtable: The Female Face of Protest: Spotlight on Belarus

Moderation of the Final Discussion

Lecture: Why FLINTA* Leave: Ethnographic insights into the withdrawal and connection practices of FLINTA* in an “inclusive” movement

Many “inclusive” movements see FLINTA* participation as central to the success of their political agendas. “What FLINTA* want” drives discourse and strategies. “What FLINTA* need” to actively shape movements often remains a side topic.

My presentation gives insight into a several month-long process around a direct action by a climate justice group in a German city. After the action, which was carried out by a group of men in the movement, several FLINTA* organized and positioned themselves to speak out against the action. I trace (1) what power dynamics determined this process, (2) what role speaking and non-speaking can play for FLINTA* in “inclusive” climate justice contexts as tools of resistance, (3) why FLINTA* leave social movements and protest groups, and (4) what new spaces and connections form within these processes where feminist and inclusive goals are renegotiated.

From an activist/anthropological perspective, I address the practical and theoretical question of how social movements can become (more) feminist spaces, and what both activists and scholars need to consider in order to be able to work with the experiences of FLINTA* in social movements in Germany.

As Part of the Panel: (Trans-)national Feminist Organizing in the Past and Future

Lecture-Performance: Self-blame Catapult: An Artistic Examination of Female Poverty in Old Age and Forms of Everyday Resistance

Old-age poverty is female. In 2021, the average German old-age pension payments for women (832 euros West/1072 euros East) were significantly lower than those for men (1218 euros West/1143 euros East). Reasons for this inequality include a gender-specific labor market, the still prevalent Male Breadwinner Model, and the increasing dismantling of the welfare state. Living in old-age poverty entails, on the one hand, managing with limited resources. On the other hand, old-age poverty also has emotional effects on those affected. Feelings of failure, shame, guilt, fear of the future, worries, feelings of inferiority, loneliness, or even melancholy regarding denied future prospects are also consequences of the aforementioned structural issues that deeply affect individuals. The cultural scholar, Dr. des. Alexandra Rau, along with the artist Maria Berauer, examines this affective dimension of experiences with old-age poverty through a lecture performance. Drawing from interview material collected as part of the DFG research project “Precarious Retirement” (led by Prof. Dr. Irene Götz) at LMU, women from various backgrounds are given a voice. How does old-age poverty feel for those affected, and what effects do these feelings have on their everyday scope of action?

Through a combination of ethnographic portraits, theoretical text fragments, and artistic interventions, the lecture performance not only highlights the structural aspect of female old-age poverty but also aims to make it physically palpable. Furthermore, it also explores collective action perspectives. The performance thus aims ultimately to point to possible voids in social movements that span along the gender category. While female old-age poverty is indeed addressed as a cross-cutting issue in the context of feminist movements, it is primarily women who speak there and denounce old-age poverty as a potential future scenario. The current subject experiencing old-age poverty appears to be relatively invisible in public debates. The examination of the affective dimension of female old-age poverty ultimately reveals that the solidarity and political mobilization of affected women are hindered by field-specific emotional states.

The portraits and text fragments will be read in dialogue by the author Alexandra Rau (Munich), the actress Shirli Volk (Munich) and the performer Sara van der Weck (Munich), and physically and performatively staged by the artist Maria Berauer (Munich).

Lecture: Antifeminism and Gender: Their Long Underestimated Significance for the Far Right [ABGESAGT]

The discussion of antifeminism as a central component of far-right ideology and even as a co-motif of far-right terrorist attacks is still young and owes its attention in particular to feminist interventions in work and research about the far right. From the current growing debate, it is often concluded that antifeminism (in the far right) is a new phenomenon. In my dissertation on antifeminism in Western Germany between 1945 and 1990, I challenge this assumption.
In narrative interviews with activists of and researchers on the so-called second women’s movement, I therefore explicitly asked about the role of (neo-)Nazis in antifeminist attacks. In retrospect, the interviewees did not attribute any particular significance to (neo)Nazis in antifeminist developments. Overall, they found it difficult to recall antifeminist developments. Above all, they made it clear that they perceived the overall social structures of the time as antifeminist. However, an analysis of feminist magazine articles and flyers revealed that in the 1980s there were a number of threa- tening letters and even violent attacks on feminist projects and parties by (neo-)Nazis. These were also thematized and noticed by feminist movements during this period.
Furthermore, I derive from this the thesis that an analysis of antifeminism in general and as a central component of far-right ideology in particular, which was missing during the research period, also leads to the fact that those aspects are not remembered later on and thus flow less into current analyses. This shows the enormous influence of terms and concepts – without them, it is difficult to remember. It is therefore necessary to develop a basic understanding of antifeminism as an ideology in its own right and to reexamine past developments using current approaches. This makes it possible to recognize the significance of gender in the far right and the long continuity of antifeminism as a central component of right-wing mobilizations and thus to conduct interdisciplinary research in order to gain new insights.

As Part of the Panel: Antifeminism: Actors, Tactics and Resistance

Panel Moderation: Political Activism in its Diversity

Panel Moderation: Contradictions and Conflicts in Feminist Movements

Lecture: The Unifying and the Dividing: Gender as a Field of Tension in the Educational Work of the Lesbian and Gay Movement in the 1980s and 1990s

In her contribution, Merlin Sophie Bootsmann examines the gendered claim to representation of groups working in education politics in the lesbian and gay movements since the 1980s in the Federal Republic. What was the background to the largely separate organisation of lesbian and gay groups? How did practical cooperation take shape in the rare cases of cross-gender cooperation? What role did trans* and inter* people and their concerns play?

As Part of the Panel: Gender as a Field of Conflict in LGBTIQ* Movements since the 1970s

Panel Moderation: Queer(ing) Claims Making

Commentary as Part of the Final Discussion

Silvy Chakkalakal is Professor of Cultural Studies at ISEK, University of Zurich, where she has held the Chair of Popular Literature and Media since August 2023. She is on the board of the CRC 1512 “Intervening Arts”, within which she is principle investigator of the project C02 “Futurity as Intervention” and co-head of the CRC laboratory area “Arts and Sciences“. Together with Prof. Wallace Best from the Gender and Sexuality Program at Princeton University and Prof. Elahe Haschemi Yekani (HU Berlin), she is leading the project “Re-Imagining the Archive: Sexual Politics and Postcolonial Entanglements“.

Panel Discussion: Gender Matters in Social Movements: A Conversation at the Interface of Academia and Activism

Roundtable: Different – Together: Antiracist Feminisms in Conversation

Workshop: Feminism Needs a Voice – Choir Workshop with Pola Dobler and the Witches of Westend Choir

FLINTA* are invited to sing together with the choir. After a short insight into feminist choir work, the participants will rehearse two polyphonic pieces that will be performed in front of the conference audience in the evening. In this context, both substantive insights are provided, and feminist demands are transformed into sound. Empowerment, on the other hand, is also experienced physically and creatively: Each individual voice becomes an essential part of the greater whole, creating a shared soundscape that aims to have political impact.

No prior knowledge required.

Workshop: On the Transformative Potential of Feminist Work Practices in Counselling, Therapy and Educational Contexts
(Sandra Eck, Alexandra Rau, Nina Reggi-Graßl, Marlene Roiser [abgesagt] and Maria Schmitter)

What unites feminist counselors, therapists, social workers, and educators/lecturers? They all take gender into account as a conflictual structural category in their work contexts, they operate within interpersonal interaction and pursue the claim to move power relations by means of knowledge transfer. Advising, teaching, supporting, intervening or guiding, they try to resist patriarchal logics in their daily work practice. If the concept of a movement is understood broadly to include forms of resistance that are not expressed in the streets but pursue the political goal of bringing about social change, then all those actors can be understood as part of a feminist movement who aim for change in these fields of activity.

Feminist approaches to counselling and therapy in this respect are not new. Since the 1970s, during the second women’s movement and the so-called consciousness-raising groups, they have been part of the repertoire of therapeutic measures, even if they are still underrepresented. Social work also looks back on a differentiated field of gender theoretical perspectives and, not least in the university context, anti-discriminatory teaching-learning concepts have found their way into further education programmes. Nevertheless, the inclusion and questioning of subject-structure contexts is still not part of the mainstream within the work contexts listed here, but is practised there only by a few – mostly explicitly labelled as feminist.

The open workshop is intended to give space to this niche perspective. With this format, we want to create a shared place for exchange, assessment and networking. Based on the respective everyday professional experiences and practices, we want to work out commonalities and differences, debate synergy effects as well as common pitfalls of the individual fields of work and finally think constructively into the future: How can feminist approaches in counselling, therapy and education settings possibly be collectively continued by means of which concrete methods in order to improve individual life situations as well as to change social relations of inequality. The format follows the principle of un-conference, and invites everyone who is interested or would like to contribute.

Lecture: Gender-Nation-Religion: Antifeminist and Anti-Gender Discourses of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROK) in Post-Socialist Russia [ABGESAGT]

The connection between neo-imperial and nationalist discourses and antifeminist and gender-hostile positions with reference to Christian values since the end of the Soviet Union in Russia provides the starting point of my contribution. Thus, it is not only in the past ten years that Russia has been an important reference for gender-hostile arguments and resources (Bluhm and Varga, 2019). In contrast to the 1990s, when the West was supposed to help the East establish liberal democracy, conservative and anti-gender actors today claim that the East should save the West from moral decay, individualism, and secularization (Graff and Korolczuk, 2022). In the offensive against gender rights and Western liberal values, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROK) plays a central role; based on the rhetoric about traditional values, it has successfully collaborated with the Russian state and developed a coordinated strategy against gender rights. This paper presents the ROK as a central political actor in current antifeminist and so-called “anti-gender” mobilizations in Russia from a discourse-analytical perspective. It shows how gender has become a central arena in the struggle for national identity and social order visions in the contemporary authoritarian regime under Vladimir Putin.

References:

Bluhm, Katharina; Varga, Mihai (ed.) (2019): New conservatives in Russia and East Central Europe. Freie Universität Berlin; Eastern Europe’s new conservatives: varieties and explanations from Poland to Russia. First issued in paperback. London, New York: Routledge (Routledge contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe series, 85).

Graff, Agnieszka; Korolczuk, Elżbieta (2022): Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Moment. Abingdon, Oxon: Taylor & Francis.

As Part of the Panel: Antifeminism: Actors, Tactics and Resistance

Keynote: Masculinities, Politics, and Nations in the Spotlight: A Story of Revival or Crisis?

Gender and nation are two powerful systems of social classification that produce alignment and identification, exclusion and distance. We all understand their relevance for social organisation including family, work and the State. However, the nation is ‘the least theorized and recognized of the intersectional categories’ (Puar, 2013: 377).

The idea and construction of the nation implies specific notions of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ (Yuval Davis, 1997). ’Real’ men have traditionally been presented as the (militarised) defenders of the nation, with women as the biological and cultural reproducers of the nation (Slootsmaecker, 2019; Yuval Davis, 1997). The body politic, the medieval metaphor that equates a state, nation or other collectivity (a church, a society) with a body, has always referred to a male biological body (Gatens, 1996).

The connection of men to politics and nations was often invisible and considered natural/normal/the norm. In 1983, Hartsock discussed ‘abstract masculinity’ (1983) and in 1985, Dyer used the ‘air’ as a metaphor for the unnoticed but yet powerful presence of masculine standards everywhere.

In this lecture, I will explore the connections of men, masculinities, politics and nations departing from the concepts of embodiment, performance and resonance in order to analyse (masculine) bodies as thick, meaningful and overflown. We seem to be living today a ‘political revival of masculinism’ (Mellström, 2016: 135) that is linked to ethnonationalism but also to the idea of men’s aggrieved entitlement (Kimmel, 2017) and their victimisation on the hands of feminist agendas. The ideas of a revival and a crisis of masculinities coexist and are activated politically, mainly by the European right-wing populisms which are anti-feminist, (ethno) nationalist and masculinist. To study masculine bodies through national politics is, then, essential to situate the gendered body as a place of political agency and to visibilise how masculinity/masculinism plays a fundamental role in the political arena.

References:

Dyer, Richard (1985) in Andy Metcalf and Martin Humphries, eds, The Sexuality of Men (London; Pluto Press, 1985), p. 28.

Gatens, Moira. 1996. Imaginary Bodies. Ethics, Power and Corporeality. London: Routledge

Hartsock, Nancy C. M. (1983) ‘The Feminist Standpoint: Developing the Ground for a Specifically Feminist Historical Materialism’, in Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, ed. S. Harding and M. B. Hintikka. Boston, MA: Reidel, pp. 283–310.

Kimmel, Michael. (2017). Angry White Men. American Masculinity at the End of an Era. New York: Bold Type Books.

Mellström, Ulf (2016), “In the time of masculinist political revival”. Norma: International Journal For Masculinity Studies, v. 11, n. 3, pp. 135–138. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/18902138.2016.1224536

McClintock Anne (1995) Imperial Leather. Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. London: Routledge.

Puar Jasbir (2013) ‘I would rather be a Cyborg than a Goddess’: Intersectionality, assemblage, and affective politics. Meritum – Belo Horizonte 8 (2): 371-390.

Slootmaeckers Koen (2019) Nationalism as Competing Masculinities: Homophobia as a Technology of Othering for Hetero- and Homonationalism. Theory and Society 48: 239–265.

Panel Moderation: (Trans-)national Feminist Organizing in the Past and Future

Moderation of the Final Discussion

Lecture: From Critique to Ideological Threat: Notes on the Conceptual Trajectory of Gender in Latin America

This paper delves into the trajectory of the term “gender” in Latin America over the past two decades. Starting with its critical roots in academic circles of the Global North universities, the research traces its journey to its current manifestation as an ideological threat mobilized by neoconservative far-right discourses in the subcontinent. This path has allowed for the formulation of strategic positions promoting illiberal values and provided conservative actors, particularly male religious politicians, with previously inaccessible privileged spaces of visibility and political-institutional legitimacy. The election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018 and the rejection of Peace Treaties in Colombia in 2016 exemplify the many uses of gender as a threat (against family, against children, etc). Therefore, analyzing how the term gender travels through such different perspectives sheds light on the entropic functioning of the current communicative economy rather than any supposed misunderstandings the term might convey. Moreover, it reveals the communicative model of misinformation, emerging from the structural convergences of digital populism, neoliberalism, and moral conservatism. Hence, it is pertinent to question how this infrastructure functions in alignment with anti-democratic conservative values that position gender as either a moral target or a scapegoat. As a result, the shifting meaning of gender for political purposes illuminates how the current trend of disorganization in the informational environment facilitates reorganization into various emerging epistemai, with global implications that exert an intensive influence on local politics.

As Part of the Panel: Struggles Between Feminist Movements and Anti-Democratic Forces

Panel Moderation: Law – Justice – Gender in Social Movements and Political Struggles

Lecture: Making Prison Gender Equitable: The Transformation of the Women’s Prison System in the 1980/90s
(Friederike Faust and Klara Nagel)

In response to feminist-motivated criticism, the penal system of some German states was transformed in the 1980/90s to be ‘women-specific’. This comprehensive transformation of some prisons was also made possible by the major penal reform of the 1970s, which, with the new penal purpose of resocialization and a legal anchoring of prisoners’ rights, provided argumentative resources to problematize the existing penal system as (gender)unjust. In the course of these reform movements, a new body of knowledge about women’s crime or women offenders emerged. We then ask, first, how this knowledge enabled specific notions of gender and justice – more precisely, of a gender-equitable penal system – and, second, how the new ‘women-specific’ penal system constituted gender or femininity. In doing so, we illuminate the tensions between law, gender, and justice in terms of how law enables certain demands for gender justice and how gender is produced in struggles for justice.

As Part of the Panel: Law – Justice – Gender in Social Movements and Political Struggles

Lecture: How exactly does antifeminism function as “symbolic glue” in a political campaign? Empirical Impressions from the Debates on the Introduction of “Marriage for All” in Germany 2009-2017

Disputes over gender issues have become one of the central cultural struggles of our time. Political reform projects, for example in the field of gender equality and anti-discrimination policies, are regularly accompanied by antifeminist campaigns that loudly question the legitimacy of these concerns and call for a return to forms of traditional gender and family policies. Because these protests do have broad social support, research now assumes that antifeminism functions as a “symbolic glue” (cf. Grzebalska et al. 2017) or “cement” (cf. Lang 2015) of right-wing campaigns, as it brings together different political camps and movements. However, it remains to be determined in more detail how this process works and how the character of the resulting protests should be assessed. Are the antifeminist mobilizations spontaneous alliances of actors or rather longer-term oriented movements? And how do these movements position themselves in relation to other fields of social conflict?

The presentation exemplifies the antifeminist mobilizations against the introduction of the so-called “Marriage for All” between 2009 and 2017 and outlines, how the addressing and activation of different groups of actors took place. With the help of a discourse-analytical evaluation of right-wing and conservative-religious media (cf. Fritzsche and Lang 2020), a mapping of relevant actors is first presented and then it is illuminated which social fields of conflict were addressed by them. Based on these empirical insights, it becomes clear that the campaigns against the introduction of “marriage for all” were a temporary, defensively oriented political project. Despite its political failure in the strict sense, however, it fostered the emergence of political networks and discursive alliances that remained relevant for later antifeminist campaigns. Precisely because of this ambivalent dynamic, the case study is suited to enrich the scholarly debate on the impact of antifeminism as a unifying and mobilizing moment of social movements.

As Part of the Panel: Antifeminism: Actors, Tactics and Resistance

Welcoming Words at the Opening of the Conference

Keynote: Saving the Children, Dismantling Democracy: Anti-Genderism and Illiberalism

Saving the children, dismantling democracy: anti-genderism and illiberalism Attacks against “gender ideology” play a key role in the illiberal project of demonizing liberalism by reducing it to its socio-cultural dimension and culturalizing political cleavages. While anti-genderism’s origins are religious, the role of religion in illiberal anti-gender politics is often instrumental. This lecture explores what is meant by ‘resistance to gender’ and how this trend resonates with core features of the illiberal worldview: its anti-modernism, anti-globalism, anti-individualism, and post-postmodernism. Evidence of the convergence between illiberalism and anti-genderism is drawn from three countries: Poland, Hungary, and Spain. In each case, illiberal forces have made use of anti-gender rhetoric to mobilize the electorate and demonize the opposition, presenting it as a threat to children and the family. I offer the concept of opportunistic synergy to capture the growing ideological affinity and developing political collaboration between religious fundamentalists, ultraconservative civil society actors, and right-wing politicians.

Artistic Documentation

Panel Discussion Moderation: Gender Matters in Social Movements: A Conversation at the Interface of Academia and Activism

Part of the Workshop: On the Transformative Potential of Feminist Work Practices in Counselling, Therapy and Educational Contexts
(Sandra Eck, Alexandra Rau, Nina Reggi-Graßl, Marlene Roiser [abgesagt] and Maria Schmitter)

What unites feminist counselors, therapists, social workers, and educators/lecturers? They all take gender into account as a conflictual structural category in their work contexts, they operate within interpersonal interaction and pursue the claim to move power relations by means of knowledge transfer. Advising, teaching, supporting, intervening or guiding, they try to resist patriarchal logics in their daily work practice. If the concept of a movement is understood broadly to include forms of resistance that are not expressed in the streets but pursue the political goal of bringing about social change, then all those actors can be understood as part of a feminist movement who aim for change in these fields of activity.

Feminist approaches to counselling and therapy in this respect are not new. Since the 1970s, during the second women’s movement and the so-called consciousness-raising groups, they have been part of the repertoire of therapeutic measures, even if they are still underrepresented. Social work also looks back on a differentiated field of gender theoretical perspectives and, not least in the university context, anti-discriminatory teaching-learning concepts have found their way into further education programmes. Nevertheless, the inclusion and questioning of subject-structure contexts is still not part of the mainstream within the work contexts listed here, but is practised there only by a few – mostly explicitly labelled as feminist.

The open workshop is intended to give space to this niche perspective. With this format, we want to create a shared place for exchange, assessment and networking. Based on the respective everyday professional experiences and practices, we want to work out commonalities and differences, debate synergy effects as well as common pitfalls of the individual fields of work and finally think constructively into the future: How can feminist approaches in counselling, therapy and education settings possibly be collectively continued by means of which concrete methods in order to improve individual life situations as well as to change social relations of inequality. The format follows the principle of un-conference, and invites everyone who is interested or would like to contribute.

Workshop: “Locking climate activists in the trunk of the car”: Anti-Greta-Memes as an Anti-Feminist Conflict Defense [ABGESAGT]
(Johanna Maj Schmidt and Charlotte Höcker)

With her “school strike for the climate,” in 2018, the young activist Greta Thunberg started an international climate movement which has since organized internationally under the hashtag #FridaysforFuture. As the figurehead of the movement, Greta soon became the target of far-right climate denialists. In light of the example of Anti- Greta memes, which have appeared en masse, the workshop first provides an insight into the political relevance of internet memes. But what is it exactly that the far right is bothered by with regards to Greta Thunberg? In a theoretical part of the workshop, we will take a closer look at the ideological connections between anti-feminism and climate denialism. Misogynistic images, fear and hatred of women, especially at the moment of their emancipation from specific gender roles, are deeply embedded in Western culture and society (Planert, 1998). If gender relations are understood as a natural relation mediated by culture, a psychodynamic or subject-theoretical approach might be helpful to undergird the domination-theoretical conceptualization of gender as a category that assigns subjects to specific places in society. As such, gender, and in particular the “penning in” of an intractable, emancipatory, and progressive femininity, can be understood as a psychological defense against conflict. Greta Thunberg points her finger at the climate catastrophe and thus makes us aware of the destructive consequences of human actions in capitalism. She points out the limitations of human omnipotence and even the threat to its existence. Precisely because such painful and threatening awareness processes are being avoided, misogynistic images and memes of the activist seem to serve as lightning rods for diffuse fears and aggressions. In the practical part of the workshop, the participants will be invited to analyze an anti-Greta meme with the help of the psychoanalytic social psychological depth hermeneutic interpretation method following Alfred Lorenzer (1986).

Lecture: The Contested Making of Feminist Futures: Conflict and Shared Visions of the Transnational Women’s Movements at the NGO Forums in Copenhagen 1980 and Nairobi 1985.

The history of women’s and feminist movements has always been transnational as well as marked by conflict, ruptures, and negotiation processes. Thus, the rise of transnational women’s movements since the 1970s also led to new debates and lines of tension. At the NGO forums of the World Conferences of the United Nations Decade for Women 1976-1985, actors from various contexts and social movements gathered. In particular, activists from the so-called “Third World” challenged the predominantly Western, white, middle-class feminism of the “Global North” and promoted negotiations on diverse visions of feminisms and women’s struggle.

This paper examines these negotiation processes of feminist visions at the NGO forums in Copenhagen in 1980 and Nairobi in 1985. I ask which conflict issues and debates participants raised at the conferences and which power relations and categories of difference shaped these negotiations. The NGO forums were not only places of conflict, but also spaces where tensions were bridged, and common feminist visions and struggles were imagined. The paper therefore also asks about the shared visions of the future, hopes, and solidarities created in Copenhagen and Nairobi. Notions of the future are thereby conceptualized as social and political actions and understood as a lens to a sharpened historical understanding of gendered movements.

The international NGO forums of the UN Decade for Women have had profound impacts on the history of feminist struggles and movements – both on a global and local level. The focus on the conflicts as they unfolded between, among others, women from the “Global South” and “Global North” aims to counteract Eurocentric historiography and shows how women from the “Global South” have transformed transnational women’s movements and gender struggles. The study of the conflicts and common future visions contributes not least to a better understanding of contemporary social movements that are transnationally networked in manifold ways.

As Part of the Panel: (Trans-)national Feminist Organizing in the Past and Future

Welcoming Words at the Opening of the Conference

Lecture: The Rise and Demise of Queer Clubbing in the Post-Yugoslav Region: Identity, Resistance, and Cultural Conflicts

As Part of the Panel: Queer(ing) Claims Making

Lecture: (Post-)Socialist Feminisms and the Right to Abortion

In Poland, the already restrictive abortion law was further tightened in 2021, despite nationwide mass protests. Since then, abortions are only permitted in a few cases, effectively resulting in a de facto ban on abortion. This regression in terms of women’s rights and autonomy is extensively discussed in numerous scholarly and activist feminist works from Poland. It is noteworthy that in historical works or deliberate references to Polish history, the period of the Communist People’s Republic of Poland (PRL) is largely excluded, with few exceptions, despite the fact that abortions were legal and free of charge from 1956 onwards, unlike the present situation.

This lecture takes this observation as a starting point and aims to highlight the specificities of (post-)socialist feminisms through an examination of the right to abortion, drawing on developments in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) or East Germany. Similarly, in the GDR, a relatively liberal gestational limit solution was implemented in 1972, decriminalizing abortions. However, the dominant narrative in the German women’s movement is one of a 150-year ban on abortions, resulting in the marginalization of women’s rights positions and DDR-specific knowledge regarding abortion. The lecture seeks to address this oversight and, based on political decisions as well as contributions from academia, culture, and women’s movements in the DDR and PRL, aims to contribute to an understanding of (post-)socialist feminisms. This endeavor aims to strengthen their position within the predominantly Western-dominated discourse on gender and to broaden the understanding of feminist movements, thereby acknowledging various forms of protest as legitimate outside Western democracies.

As Part of the Panel: Body Politics: Conflicts over Abortion between Western and Eastern Europe

Lecture: Identity Politics. On the Genesis of a Concept and its Instrumentalization in the Struggle for Feminist Sovereignty of Interpretation

Identity politics first emerged in the 1970s as an umbrella term for political strategies that answered to the still recent insight into the intersectionality of oppression. In its popular statement the Combahee River Collective stated that liberative politics of liberation are ideally operated not representatively from a privileged position but starting from the position of the oppressed. The prioritization of the perspectives of those affected can thus both epistemically (due to expertise) and/or strategically (as a subversive practice) beneficial and morally (as an act of recognition) required.

In the current debates not only conservative or liberal but also by emancipatory forces fear a so-called “cancel culture”, the endangerment of “openness of research, teaching and discussion” (FAZ) as well as the dominance of identity politics, which shall refer to an increasing individualization of political struggles while ignoring the social question. With regard to their implicit beginnings in the organization of workers during industrialization and the context of the explicit establishment of the term in the 1970s makes it clear that identity politics are neither about turning away from analyzes of socio-economic inequality nor about fixation of a homogeneous identity against others – instead the initial perspective was to enable political alliances that recognize differences without reifying them.

The lecture tries to understand the concept of identity politics in its genesis as well as in the context of daily politics and to examine its role in inner-feminist debates. It will be made clear that the current primarily negative use of the term can be understood as an effect of instrumentalization in struggles for sovereignty of interpretation. The conceptual-historical analysis shows that it is a reactionary use that primarily serves the self-legitimization of feminist theories which still raise universal validity claims and thus practically refuse to reflect on their potential interweaving in and stabilization of hegemonial conditions.

As Part of the Panel: Struggles Between Feminist Movements and Anti-Democratic Forces

Lecture: Global Scream! Art and Activism of Polish Migrants in Berlin.

Since the conservative and authoritarian Law and Justice Party took power in Poland in 2015, thousands of people have taken to the streets. When threatened with restricting the right to abortion, a new social movement, Dziewuchy (“Girls”), emerged in Poland. The activism of the Polish migrants from the Dziewuchy Berlin collective consists not only of protests and solidarity actions with Poland, but also of the struggle for women’s and LGBT rights in Germany.

A large part of Dziewuchy Berlin’s activist practice is art – visual art, literature or performance. What also characterizes the creative actions of the collective is the creation of things and realities. One initiative is the Embassy of Polish Women*, an artistic space installation that offers a place for every person, regardless of gender. Each person can be an ambassador for Polish women in Berlin.

For Dziewuchy Berlin it is also important to unite widely, not only across borders, but also within feminist circles, which can often be exclusionary. Especially in Berlin, a city that is still divided in many ways. To unite Berlin’s divided feminist communities, the collective proposed the action “Global Scream” for 2019, a minute of screaming. Since then, the action has taken place every year on Women’s Day. Both women and men are members of the Dziewuchy Berlin collective.

In the struggles for women’s and LGBT rights, especially in exile, we cannot afford to exclude anyone. Especially since right-wing conservative circles are (too) well connected across borders.

Can art unite? Can artistic actions contribute to change? What are the struggles on the streets of Berlin? What are Polish activists facing abroad? Is feminist solidarity mutual? Are protests enough? The presentation offers an auto-ethnographic insight into the artistic and political activities of the feminist collective Dziewuchy Berlin by its founder, the Polish artist Anna Krenz.

As Part of the Panel: Body Politics: Conflicts over Abortion between Western and Eastern Europe

Lecture: “Good Births for All“? Law and Gender in Policies of Equitable Childbearing

Birth activists have been describing infrastructures of childbearing as problematic for decades. Currently, they explicitly link questions of the professional design of childbearing – i.e. what kind of accompaniment and support childbearing requires – with the negotiation of questions of (reproductive) justice in times of care crisis. In this context, “obstetric care security” will be discussed in relation to (clinical) working conditions, and violence and discrimination in childbirth as well as self-determination of childbearing will also be addressed. The article will deal with moments of negotiation of justice of childbearing in the course of concrete legal means and legal-political demands, as they have recently also found their way into the coalition agreement of the German government, and asks: What ideas of the common underlie the political demand for “good births for all”? How are these gendered? How does law – in the attempt to produce and maintain just conditions of childbearing – become productive?

As Part of the Panel: Law – Justice – Gender in Social Movements and Political Struggles

Lecture: Minority Feminist Movements: Contemporary forms of gender and social critique of the Sorbs in Germany

Although there has been much progress on gender equality issues in recent years, multiple, often deeply rooted gender-based discriminations persist. Members of minority groups represent a particularly vulnerable group, as they face multiple discrimination due to intersectional power relations. At the same time, ethnic minorities such as the Sorbs have been underrepresented in the academic and social debate on feminism.

This paper aims to broaden the intersectional perspective of feminist movements in Germany by including contemporary Sorbian representations of gender critique. For this purpose, different forms of individual and collective positioning in relation to feminist goals of Sorbs are presented. Within the autochthonous minority, a diverse engagement of gender critique can be observed, ranging from debates about a gender-equitable revision of the Sorbian national anthem, to Sorbian feminist rap and subculture on the Internet, to free art and cultural initiatives.

While sociological definitions often emphasize formal and goal-oriented aspects of social movements, informal interactions often fall into the background. This paper therefore aims to explore how everyday, less formalized and intermediary forms of dissent can also be included in a broad concept of socials movement.

As Part of the Panel: Contradictions and Conflicts in Feminist Movements

Student Assistant

Lecture: Form local protest to transnational solidarity? The feminist strike and new potentials of political participation

My talk focusses on feminist strike initiatives in Europe. In doing so, I am pursuing the observation that transnational modes of action and orientation emerged with the idea of the feminist strike in the field of feminist movements. In a first empirical step I retrace this new relation of local and transnational practice: Where can transnational reference be observed and how is it changing views and ways of acting? In which moments is local action strengthened by transnational references? When are conflicts arising between the local and transnational scales of action and orientation? My analysis is based on interviews with activists from southern and western Europe. By this, I research how the idea of the feminist strike that has been emerging out of the feminist protests in Latin America and Spain developed recently on a local level. Another focus of my research is the network “EAST”, which started during the pandemic in Eastern Europe and transnationally networked feminist struggles on care work and such against right-wing authoritarian governance. Here I worked with ethnographic fieldwork and formats of cooperative research. Besides strategies of protest and resistance in a narrowed sense I deal with feminist interventions in public space, activist art and strategies of militant mapping. A central observation of this empirical research is: The transnational level of political orientation is fostering connections between different feminist struggles (such as against patriarchal violence, for reproductive justice or new forms of care work). Building on this feminist initiatives manage to raise social questions within cross-movement-networks such as protests against neoliberal reforms or a restrictive border politics of the EU. Within such cross-movement-actions these feminist initiatives are elaborating and articulating ideas of social transformation that are based on the conditions of social reproduction. This observation is a starting point for me to elaborate in a second step aspects of solidarity within the outlined transnational structures. To enable a discussion of these practical designs of solidarity I refer to theoretical concepts that are defining solidarity as a way of relating that endures difference and conflict. In doing so I aim to contribute social movement’s experiences and knowledge to the ongoing debate in social sciences on the expansion of democratic participation.

As Part of the Panel: (Trans-)national Feminist Organizing in the Past and Future

Lecture: Urban mobility transformation: Making transport infrastructures more equitable

Social movements in transport transformation activism are increasingly making demands on urban transport infrastructures: they should become more accessible and equitable, enable a good life in the city and meet the needs of heterogeneous user groups. Activists have long recognized that infrastructures generate intersectional inequalities, so they are demanding, for example, more territorial justice, more social justice and more environmental justice as a response to a multiple crisis situation. Law plays a central role in this process, providing a framework for activist mobilization, but also becoming the target of civil society demands (“Berlin Mobility Law finally implemented!”). In the field of tension between justice as a political demand and as an analytical foil, this article will ask how legalized and gendered ideas of a equitable city shape the struggle for a mobility turnaround in Berlin.

As Part of the Panel: Law – Justice – Gender in Social Movements and Political Struggles

Moderation of the Roundtable: Different – Together: Antiracist Feminisms in Conversation

Workshop: Self, Bodies and Decisions: A Circle on Abortion Stigma
(Teresa Melo and Zofia Reznik)

In various European countries the access to abortion is being limited and very often is expected to be kept a private matter. A circle, transformational practice derived from a shamanic tradition, is a conversation format where all the voices are equal and being heard. We would like to propose an abortion circle of personal narratives, inspired by an event gathering herstories of abortion artists, accompanying the Beata Rojek’s and Sonia Sobiech’s exhibition Yesterday’s Dreams Weave the Ruins of Tomorrow’s Temples (66P gallery, Wrocław, Poland, 2022).

We would like to encourage different personal narratives related to abortion – experienced as a personal, relational or a social experience – to emerge within a safe space of listeners. We would like not only to hold a circle where a variety of voices might be heard without judgement, but also to encourage us as an academic community to take a collective insight on our positionalities and the relation of law and cultural practice.

The theme for this circle would therefore be abortion stigma and the embodiment of transnational feminist artistic practices which strength might be surprisingly different than what might be expected based on the particular countries’ legal systems. We believe that igniting such an exchange of lived experiences is an opportunity to hold a space for a transcultural exchange of stories from very conscious individuals. We would also like this circle to be an opportunity to collectively navigate in the gendered field of abortion experiences, making it as inclusive as possible and at the same time keeping it a safe space for those in particular, who might have/had their abortion as a lived experience.

We would also like to share our experiences and skills with the event participants and encourage them to reuse this format: replicate, adjust and reapply in their diverse communities.

Lecture: Making Prison Gender Equitable: The Transformation of the Women’s Prison System in the 1980/90s
(Friederike Faust and Klara Nagel)

In response to feminist-motivated criticism, the penal system of some German states was transformed in the 1980/90s to be ‘women-specific’. This comprehensive transformation of some prisons was also made possible by the major penal reform of the 1970s, which, with the new penal purpose of resocialization and a legal anchoring of prisoners’ rights, provided argumentative resources to problematize the existing penal system as (gender)unjust. In the course of these reform movements, a new body of knowledge about women’s crime or women offenders emerged. We then ask, first, how this knowledge enabled specific notions of gender and justice – more precisely, of a gender-equitable penal system – and, second, how the new ‘women-specific’ penal system constituted gender or femininity. In doing so, we illuminate the tensions between law, gender, and justice in terms of how law enables certain demands for gender justice and how gender is produced in struggles for justice.

As Part of the Panel: Law – Justice – Gender in Social Movements and Political Struggles

Panel Moderation: Gender as a Field of Conflict in LGBTIQ* Movements since the 1970s

Lecture: Online Misogyny against Locally Active Women Politicians – an Exploration of Existing Support Mechanisms and Current practices of Self-Censorship

Online misogyny, characterized by the targeted harassment of women on social media platforms through abusive language, imagery, and threats of violence, represents a significant form of online radicalization (Ging & Siapera, 2019; Massanari, 2017). While support systems exist for full-time politicians facing online misogyny, locally active female politicians, who often engage in voluntary work, also experience severe consequences of misogynist attacks but lack protection or support mechanisms as well as coping strategies. This leads to women deciding not to raise their voice to critical issues online – either as a consequence of online harassment and the realization that they do not have the professional as well as psychological capacity to cope with it alone, or as an active precaution to protect themselves and their families from possible attacks (e.g., Blätte et al., 2022).

My research investigates the factors contributing to these women becoming subject to online misogyny, particularly those advocating on polarizing issues such as migration or climate change. I explore the impact of online misogyny on their (online) behavior and assess the extent of support received through professional networks for politically active women. Additionally, I examine the accessibility and utilization of available support spaces and the government’s role in addressing online misogyny. This entails examining the gap between existing support systems and women’s awareness and access to them.

To comprehensively analyze these issues, I employ a mixed-methods approach. Qualitative content analysis uncovers key narratives and dynamics, while methods from media anthropology, including online ethnography and offline semi-structured interviews, enable a deeper study of the social media ecosystem. Through an intersectional lens, I investigate the influence of historical structures, local political struggles, and social hierarchies on shaping online discourse surrounding misogyny. This research aims to shed light on the complexities of online misogyny and inform strategies for combating it in relation to locally politically engaged women.

References:

Blätte, A., L. Dinnebier, M. Schmitz-Vardar (2022). Vielfältige Repräsentationen unter Druck: Anfeindungen und Aggressionen in der Kommunalpolitik. Band 64 der Schriftenreihe zur Demokratie. Berlin: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.

Ging, D., & Siapera, E. (Eds.). (2019). Gender Hate Online: Understanding the New Anti- Feminism. Palgrave Macmillan.

Massanari, A. (2017). #Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures. New Media & Society, 19(3), 329–346.

As Part of the Panel: Antifeminism: Actors, Tactics and Resistance

Lecture: Conflict Dynamics Around Gender and Antifeminism in Rural Areas: Using the Example of the Ore Mountain District (Erzgebirgskreis) in Saxony [ABGESAGT]
(Henriette Rodemerk and Johanna Niendorf)

In the research project “Gender Democracy with the example of Ore Mountains” we investigated social lines of conflict that can be reconstructed from interviews and group discussions with local civil society around the topics of protection against violence, reproductive and sexual self-determination, the plurality of life plans and political participation. As a social psychological research project with psychoanalytic methodology, we are particularly looking for underlying motives and dynamics, as well as tabooed topics, that unfold in the latency of the group discussions. From a gender-reflective perspective, we ask how right-wing and fundamentalist-religious structures influence the conditions for democratization and emancipatory spaces. It becomes clear that fragments of antifeminist ideology and resentment find their expression in professional and everyday practices of people and their experiences. In the absence of strong feminist movements, we encounter in a powerful categorization by gender in the Ore mountain district, in which in the sense of a “repressive harmony” (Mense, 2022) gender-specific role expectations are effective. In particular, homogenizing conceptions of cohesion and rigid identity constructions foster exclusion dynamics and processes of externalizing social problems, thus providing a breeding ground for anti-democratic mobilizations. At the same time, they prevent the negotiation of feminist concerns and pluralistic possibilities for development.

In the context of a lecture at the conference “Mapping Gender Struggles” we would like to present the results in relation to gender democracy and antifeminism and discuss them in the broader context of authoritarian dynamics in society.

As Part of the Panel: Antifeminism: Actors, Tactics and Resistance

Roundtable: Different – Together: Antiracist Feminisms in Conversation

Artistic Documentation

Sophia O’David, born 1996 in Munich, is a versatile communication designer and illustrator. Her creative passion began in Munich and London, where she grew up. She successfully completed her training as a “state-certified communication designer” at the German Master School for Fashion and expanded her knowledge at the “University of Applied Sciences for Cut and Design”. Sophia made a strong statement with her graduation collection “Indigo”, which exclusively featured BIPoC models.

After her school career, she started as a trainee graphic designer at Feinkost Käfer GmbH, then at adabay GmbH and most recently at a streetwear company. Parallel to her full-time job, she worked on non-profit projects such as graphic design for the “Black Lives Matter” demonstration, the “Stop the N-Word” campaign and several more. Her diverse and socially engaged work inspired Sophia to set up her own business and realise her own projects at the end of 2022.

Her work can be found on her website.

Moderation of the Panel: A Bleak Reality: Twenty-First Century and Afghan Women

Roundtable: Different – Together: Antiracist Feminisms in Conversation

Lecture: Feminist, LGBTQ* and Right-Wing Disputes on the Sovereignty of Bodies and Nations.

Contemporary politics in Poland are driven by right wing populism and social antagonism. In order to successfully manage social inclusion and exclusion amongst other dynamics of bordering belonging comes at play. One reason for the success of Women Strike in 2016 and 2020 was due their claims of representing the sovereign voice of the people, while at the same insisting on multiple Polish and European belongings. Claims of sovereignty became central elements within political disputes and can be observed not only the level of discourses, but as well within the sensible, bodily and spatial manifestation of protests performed by various political environments. The far-right conservative and feminist/LGBTQ* movements are examples of political environments that stand for opposites within recent political struggles. As it will be shown on the example of the disputes on gender, abortion and LGBTQ* issues and related interventions, collective performances in the context of protest events, they also apply conflicting claims of sovereignty, that are linked to opposing social-political imaginaries and sensible orders.

As Part of the Panel: Struggles Between Feminist Movements and Anti-Democratic Forces

Lecture-Performance: Self-blame Catapult: An Artistic Examination of Female Poverty in Old Age and Forms of Everyday Resistance

Old-age poverty is female. In 2021, the average German old-age pension payments for women (832 euros West/1072 euros East) were significantly lower than those for men (1218 euros West/1143 euros East). Reasons for this inequality include a gender-specific labor market, the still prevalent Male Breadwinner Model, and the increasing dismantling of the welfare state. Living in old-age poverty entails, on the one hand, managing with limited resources. On the other hand, old-age poverty also has emotional effects on those affected. Feelings of failure, shame, guilt, fear of the future, worries, feelings of inferiority, loneliness, or even melancholy regarding denied future prospects are also consequences of the aforementioned structural issues that deeply affect individuals. The cultural scholar, Dr. des. Alexandra Rau, along with the artist Maria Berauer, examines this affective dimension of experiences with old-age poverty through a lecture performance. Drawing from interview material collected as part of the DFG research project “Precarious Retirement” (led by Prof. Dr. Irene Götz) at LMU, women from various backgrounds are given a voice. How does old-age poverty feel for those affected, and what effects do these feelings have on their everyday scope of action?

Through a combination of ethnographic portraits, theoretical text fragments, and artistic interventions, the lecture performance not only highlights the structural aspect of female old-age poverty but also aims to make it physically palpable. Furthermore, it also explores collective action perspectives. The performance thus aims ultimately to point to possible voids in social movements that span along the gender category. While female old-age poverty is indeed addressed as a cross-cutting issue in the context of feminist movements, it is primarily women who speak there and denounce old-age poverty as a potential future scenario. The current subject experiencing old-age poverty appears to be relatively invisible in public debates. The examination of the affective dimension of female old-age poverty ultimately reveals that the solidarity and political mobilization of affected women are hindered by field-specific emotional states.

The portraits and text fragments will be read in dialogue by the author Alexandra Rau (Munich), the actress Shirli Volk (Munich) and the performer Sara van der Weck (Munich), and physically and performatively staged by the artist Maria Berauer (Munich).

Workshop: On the Transformative Potential of Feminist Work Practices in Counselling, Therapy and Educational Contexts
(Sandra Eck, Alexandra Rau, Nina Reggi-Graßl, Marlene Roiser [abgesagt] and Maria Schmitter)

What unites feminist counselors, therapists, social workers, and educators/lecturers? They all take gender into account as a conflictual structural category in their work contexts, they operate within interpersonal interaction and pursue the claim to move power relations by means of knowledge transfer. Advising, teaching, supporting, intervening or guiding, they try to resist patriarchal logics in their daily work practice. If the concept of a movement is understood broadly to include forms of resistance that are not expressed in the streets but pursue the political goal of bringing about social change, then all those actors can be understood as part of a feminist movement who aim for change in these fields of activity.

Feminist approaches to counselling and therapy in this respect are not new. Since the 1970s, during the second women’s movement and the so-called consciousness-raising groups, they have been part of the repertoire of therapeutic measures, even if they are still underrepresented. Social work also looks back on a differentiated field of gender theoretical perspectives and, not least in the university context, anti-discriminatory teaching-learning concepts have found their way into further education programmes. Nevertheless, the inclusion and questioning of subject-structure contexts is still not part of the mainstream within the work contexts listed here, but is practised there only by a few – mostly explicitly labelled as feminist.

The open workshop is intended to give space to this niche perspective. With this format, we want to create a shared place for exchange, assessment and networking. Based on the respective everyday professional experiences and practices, we want to work out commonalities and differences, debate synergy effects as well as common pitfalls of the individual fields of work and finally think constructively into the future: How can feminist approaches in counselling, therapy and education settings possibly be collectively continued by means of which concrete methods in order to improve individual life situations as well as to change social relations of inequality. The format follows the principle of un-conference, and invites everyone who is interested or would like to contribute.

Panel Moderation: Antifeminism: Actors, Tactics and Resistance

Workshop: On the Transformative Potential of Feminist Work Practices in Counselling, Therapy and Educational Contexts
(Sandra Eck, Alexandra Rau, Nina Reggi-Graßl, Marlene Roiser [abgesagt] and Maria Schmitter)

What unites feminist counselors, therapists, social workers, and educators/lecturers? They all take gender into account as a conflictual structural category in their work contexts, they operate within interpersonal interaction and pursue the claim to move power relations by means of knowledge transfer. Advising, teaching, supporting, intervening or guiding, they try to resist patriarchal logics in their daily work practice. If the concept of a movement is understood broadly to include forms of resistance that are not expressed in the streets but pursue the political goal of bringing about social change, then all those actors can be understood as part of a feminist movement who aim for change in these fields of activity.

Feminist approaches to counselling and therapy in this respect are not new. Since the 1970s, during the second women’s movement and the so-called consciousness-raising groups, they have been part of the repertoire of therapeutic measures, even if they are still underrepresented. Social work also looks back on a differentiated field of gender theoretical perspectives and, not least in the university context, anti-discriminatory teaching-learning concepts have found their way into further education programmes. Nevertheless, the inclusion and questioning of subject-structure contexts is still not part of the mainstream within the work contexts listed here, but is practised there only by a few – mostly explicitly labelled as feminist.

The open workshop is intended to give space to this niche perspective. With this format, we want to create a shared place for exchange, assessment and networking. Based on the respective everyday professional experiences and practices, we want to work out commonalities and differences, debate synergy effects as well as common pitfalls of the individual fields of work and finally think constructively into the future: How can feminist approaches in counselling, therapy and education settings possibly be collectively continued by means of which concrete methods in order to improve individual life situations as well as to change social relations of inequality. The format follows the principle of un-conference, and invites everyone who is interested or would like to contribute.

Lecture: In the Shadow of Revolt: Non-academic Women of the 1968 Generation oscillating between Liberation and Stagnation

“1968” is considered a revolutionary turning point in West German history: symbolically, the year stands for the student protest against hierarchical structures at universities, the fight against capitalism and fascism, a more liberal sexual morality, and a reorganization of gender relations. But while the general historical consciousness is dominated primarily by male spokespersons of the “intellectual, metropolitan elite” (Hodenberg), actors of the women’s movement, which also formed in the course of the protests, almost fade into the background. However, their commitment to the “politicization of the private sphere” had a lasting impact on large sections of the population and significantly advanced the transformation of female lifestyles, couple relationships, and families.

The exploration of this more inconspicuous group of people, who nevertheless represent a majority of their generation, seems particularly desiderable from the perspective of Comparative European Ethnology, especially since the discipline’s research interests are primarily concerned with the everyday life of the general population and the biographies of people who are not among the outstanding or historically significant personalities of their time (Lehmann).

Using the example of two female interviewees born around 1950, the presentation shows that the “protest climate” (Hodenberg), starting from the universities, also reached rural spaces, families, and couple relationships, and to what extent narratives about gender-specific relationship dynamics reveal both a stagnation in and a disengagement from traditional values and norms. With the underlying intention of focusing explicitly on the private sphere, away from the main sites of social movements and public protests, the presentation also aims to build bridges to contemporary-oriented research.

As Part of the Panel: Contradictions and Conflicts in Feminist Movements

Film Documentation

Workshop: Self, Bodies and Decisions: A Circle on Abortion Stigma
(Teresa Melo and Zofia Reznik)

In various European countries the access to abortion is being limited and very often is expected to be kept a private matter. A circle, transformational practice derived from a shamanic tradition, is a conversation format where all the voices are equal and being heard. We would like to propose an abortion circle of personal narratives, inspired by an event gathering herstories of abortion artists, accompanying the Beata Rojek’s and Sonia Sobiech’s exhibition Yesterday’s Dreams Weave the Ruins of Tomorrow’s Temples (66P gallery, Wrocław, Poland, 2022).

We would like to encourage different personal narratives related to abortion – experienced as a personal, relational or a social experience – to emerge within a safe space of listeners. We would like not only to hold a circle where a variety of voices might be heard without judgement, but also to encourage us as an academic community to take a collective insight on our positionalities and the relation of law and cultural practice.

The theme for this circle would therefore be abortion stigma and the embodiment of transnational feminist artistic practices which strength might be surprisingly different than what might be expected based on the particular countries’ legal systems. We believe that igniting such an exchange of lived experiences is an opportunity to hold a space for a transcultural exchange of stories from very conscious individuals. We would also like this circle to be an opportunity to collectively navigate in the gendered field of abortion experiences, making it as inclusive as possible and at the same time keeping it a safe space for those in particular, who might have/had their abortion as a lived experience.

We would also like to share our experiences and skills with the event participants and encourage them to reuse this format: replicate, adjust and reapply in their diverse communities.

Commentary as Part of the Final Discussion

Panel Moderation: Queer(ing) Claims Making

Workshop: On the Transformative Potential of Feminist Work Practices in Counselling, Therapy and Educational Contexts
(Sandra Eck, Alexandra Rau, Nina Reggi-Graßl, Marlene Roiser [abgesagt] and Maria Schmitter)

What unites feminist counselors, therapists, social workers, and educators/lecturers? They all take gender into account as a conflictual structural category in their work contexts, they operate within interpersonal interaction and pursue the claim to move power relations by means of knowledge transfer. Advising, teaching, supporting, intervening or guiding, they try to resist patriarchal logics in their daily work practice. If the concept of a movement is understood broadly to include forms of resistance that are not expressed in the streets but pursue the political goal of bringing about social change, then all those actors can be understood as part of a feminist movement who aim for change in these fields of activity.

Feminist approaches to counselling and therapy in this respect are not new. Since the 1970s, during the second women’s movement and the so-called consciousness-raising groups, they have been part of the repertoire of therapeutic measures, even if they are still underrepresented. Social work also looks back on a differentiated field of gender theoretical perspectives and, not least in the university context, anti-discriminatory teaching-learning concepts have found their way into further education programmes. Nevertheless, the inclusion and questioning of subject-structure contexts is still not part of the mainstream within the work contexts listed here, but is practised there only by a few – mostly explicitly labelled as feminist.

The open workshop is intended to give space to this niche perspective. With this format, we want to create a shared place for exchange, assessment and networking. Based on the respective everyday professional experiences and practices, we want to work out commonalities and differences, debate synergy effects as well as common pitfalls of the individual fields of work and finally think constructively into the future: How can feminist approaches in counselling, therapy and education settings possibly be collectively continued by means of which concrete methods in order to improve individual life situations as well as to change social relations of inequality. The format follows the principle of un-conference, and invites everyone who is interested or would like to contribute.

Lecture: Conflict Dynamics Around Gender and Antifeminism in Rural Areas: Using the Example of the Ore Mountain District (Erzgebirgskreis) in Saxony [ABGESAGT]
(Henriette Rodemerk and Johanna Niendorf)

In the research project “Gender Democracy with the example of Ore Mountains” we investigated social lines of conflict that can be reconstructed from interviews and group discussions with local civil society around the topics of protection against violence, reproductive and sexual self-determination, the plurality of life plans and political participation. As a social psychological research project with psychoanalytic methodology, we are particularly looking for underlying motives and dynamics, as well as tabooed topics, that unfold in the latency of the group discussions. From a gender-reflective perspective, we ask how right-wing and fundamentalist-religious structures influence the conditions for democratization and emancipatory spaces. It becomes clear that fragments of antifeminist ideology and resentment find their expression in professional and everyday practices of people and their experiences. In the absence of strong feminist movements, we encounter in a powerful categorization by gender in the Ore mountain district, in which in the sense of a “repressive harmony” (Mense, 2022) gender-specific role expectations are effective. In particular, homogenizing conceptions of cohesion and rigid identity constructions foster exclusion dynamics and processes of externalizing social problems, thus providing a breeding ground for anti-democratic mobilizations. At the same time, they prevent the negotiation of feminist concerns and pluralistic possibilities for development.

In the context of a lecture at the conference “Mapping Gender Struggles” we would like to present the results in relation to gender democracy and antifeminism and discuss them in the broader context of authoritarian dynamics in society.

As Part of the Panel: Antifeminism: Actors, Tactics and Resistance

Lecture: Contestations over Gender in the International Gay (and Lesbian) Association (ILGA) in the 1970s and 1980s

Andrea Rottmann examines, in her contribution, the debates surrounding gender within the IGA/ILGA, the International (Lesbian and) Gay Association, during the 1970s and 1980s. In doing so, she analyzes both the tensions between lesbian women and gay men and the handling of the issue of transsexuality, which became a topic within ILGA from the early 1980s onward.

As Part of the Panel: Gender as a Field of Conflict in LGBTIQ* Movements since the 1970s

Roundtable: The Female Face of Protest: Spotlight on Belarus

Workshop: “Locking climate activists in the trunk of the car”: Anti-Greta-Memes as an Anti-Feminist Conflict Defense [ABGESAGT]
(Johanna Maj Schmidt and Charlotte Höcker)

With her “school strike for the climate,” in 2018, the young activist Greta Thunberg started an international climate movement which has since organized internationally under the hashtag #FridaysforFuture. As the figurehead of the movement, Greta soon became the target of far-right climate denialists. In light of the example of Anti- Greta memes, which have appeared en masse, the workshop first provides an insight into the political relevance of internet memes. But what is it exactly that the far right is bothered by with regards to Greta Thunberg? In a theoretical part of the workshop, we will take a closer look at the ideological connections between anti-feminism and climate denialism. Misogynistic images, fear and hatred of women, especially at the moment of their emancipation from specific gender roles, are deeply embedded in Western culture and society (Planert, 1998). If gender relations are understood as a natural relation mediated by culture, a psychodynamic or subject-theoretical approach might be helpful to undergird the domination-theoretical conceptualization of gender as a category that assigns subjects to specific places in society. As such, gender, and in particular the “penning in” of an intractable, emancipatory, and progressive femininity, can be understood as a psychological defense against conflict. Greta Thunberg points her finger at the climate catastrophe and thus makes us aware of the destructive consequences of human actions in capitalism. She points out the limitations of human omnipotence and even the threat to its existence. Precisely because such painful and threatening awareness processes are being avoided, misogynistic images and memes of the activist seem to serve as lightning rods for diffuse fears and aggressions. In the practical part of the workshop, the participants will be invited to analyze an anti-Greta meme with the help of the psychoanalytic social psychological depth hermeneutic interpretation method following Alfred Lorenzer (1986).

Lecture: My Body, my Belly: How Pivotal is Body Politics for Feminist Protest? A Comparative Analysis of Different Waves of Feminism

With the start of feminism in the 19th Century in Western Europe feminists were fighting for equal rights and participation. In many ways, their fights were successful and have changed gender relations fundamentally. Yet we still face gender inequalities. The actual situation is somehow paradoxical: We observe successes but also failures and regression and we find a wide variety of feminisms, feminism is more diverse than ever (queer feminism, neoliberal feminism, global feminism etc.). Many topics are still the same such as the fight for sexual and bodily self determination and for the access for abortion (the latter being dismantled in the US in 2022). Thus body and sexuality still play a pivotal role in feminist politics.

In my presentation, I want to focus on feminist body politics throughout the different waves of feminism (my main focus will be on Germany). My aim is to look at how topics around sexuality and the body became politicized. Culminating in the slogan “The Personal is Polical” feminism has changed the idea of the political profoundly. Experiences and self-exploration became the starting point for creating new practices and knowledeges, which then helped to mobilize protest. I am interested in tracing also the changes feminist body politics has gone through since the second wave in the 1970s until today. My question is how feminist critique is entangled with body politics and how it has changed within the last decades. With respect to social protest and social movements the role of the public, spaces and media also have to be re-considered.

As Part of the Panel: Body Politics: Conflicts over Abortion between Western and Eastern Europe

Workshop: On the Transformative Potential of Feminist Work Practices in Counselling, Therapy and Educational Contexts
(Sandra Eck, Alexandra Rau, Nina Reggi-Graßl, Marlene Roiser [abgesagt] and Maria Schmitter)

What unites feminist counselors, therapists, social workers, and educators/lecturers? They all take gender into account as a conflictual structural category in their work contexts, they operate within interpersonal interaction and pursue the claim to move power relations by means of knowledge transfer. Advising, teaching, supporting, intervening or guiding, they try to resist patriarchal logics in their daily work practice. If the concept of a movement is understood broadly to include forms of resistance that are not expressed in the streets but pursue the political goal of bringing about social change, then all those actors can be understood as part of a feminist movement who aim for change in these fields of activity.

Feminist approaches to counselling and therapy in this respect are not new. Since the 1970s, during the second women’s movement and the so-called consciousness-raising groups, they have been part of the repertoire of therapeutic measures, even if they are still underrepresented. Social work also looks back on a differentiated field of gender theoretical perspectives and, not least in the university context, anti-discriminatory teaching-learning concepts have found their way into further education programmes. Nevertheless, the inclusion and questioning of subject-structure contexts is still not part of the mainstream within the work contexts listed here, but is practised there only by a few – mostly explicitly labelled as feminist.

The open workshop is intended to give space to this niche perspective. With this format, we want to create a shared place for exchange, assessment and networking. Based on the respective everyday professional experiences and practices, we want to work out commonalities and differences, debate synergy effects as well as common pitfalls of the individual fields of work and finally think constructively into the future: How can feminist approaches in counselling, therapy and education settings possibly be collectively continued by means of which concrete methods in order to improve individual life situations as well as to change social relations of inequality. The format follows the principle of un-conference, and invites everyone who is interested or would like to contribute.

Panel Discussion: Gender Matters in Social Movements: A Conversation at the Interface of Academia and Activism

Concert

Lecture: Home-making as Political Claim? Lessons from Asylum-seeking Women in Lower Saxony

Asylum reception centers as sites of “arrival-in-between” (Thorshaug, 2018) might provoke feelings of disorientation and uncertainty for its inhabitants. Can we yet imagine home-making in these centers as a way of coping uncertainty and lack of normalcy? Can we imagine home as a contingent, mobile and open-ended process at work for asylum-seekers on the move? This paper inquires in the light of an ethnographic research conducted in 2018-2019 how the women in reception centers of Lower Saxony cultivate a sense of ‘being-at-home’ through everyday meaning- and place-making acts within the bounds of asylum structure. Engaging Iris Marion Young’s controversial conception of home, I assume home as a gendered space is nevertheless a locus of care and protection. As Young argues, the feelings associated with home, such as safety, individuation, privacy, and preservation are values which must be claimed by all the people who are deprived of them. I adopt home as a heuristic tool to study how asylum-seeking women success (or fail) to develop a meaningful relationship to the inhospitable settings in which they are housed. Women assume a particular role in making meaning out of their stay in these centers, in carving out of them a meaningful place and engaging in everyday sociability to establish normalcy.

As Part of the Panel: Queer(ing) Claims Making

Panel Discussion: Gender Matters in Social Movements: A Conversation at the Interface of Academia and Activism

Panel Discussion: Gender Matters in Social Movements: A Conversation at the Interface of Academia and Activism

Roundtable: The Female Face of Protest: Spotlight on Belarus

Lecture: Contentious Politics of Gender: Consequences of an Encounter

The question of the institutional organization and the discursive constitution of “gender” is a matter of polarized social contentions. Simplified, the feminist and LGBTQ+ movements push towards relaxion of the social norms that regulate gender and sexuality, as well as towards greater availability of different lived practices. Their opponents pull to preserve the existing heteropatriarchal regimes or to legitimize further restrictions. These opposing political forces engage in a range of conventional and disruptive actions to defend or promote their cause. This presentation refers to this polarized ideological encounter as the “contentious politics of gender”. The last decade brought an unprecedented trans-nationalization of non-institutionalized gender politics – globally spreading similarly formulated demands to stall or move forward social changes. The so called “anti-gender” campaigns are an example of such trends. Consequently, studies of either “anti-gender” or feminist/LGBTQ+ activism proliferated. Yet, insights on the consequences of this encounter for both sides are scarce. To address this knowledge gap, this presentation asks: what kind of adaptations and/or innovations of tactics and frames occur in movements involved in this struggle over gender? By using empirical examples of contentious politics of gender, this presentation highlights the dynamic, interactive and ideologically refined character of struggles over gender.

As Part of the Panel: Struggles Between Feminist Movements and Anti-Democratic Forces

Lecture: Countering State Violence through Feminist Praxis: Examining the Nexus of Academic Inquiry and Activism in Saudi Arabia [ABGESAGT]

In a state that endeavours to cultivate unity among its citizens by imposing and promoting political and cultural identities that are rooted in Arab and Islamic cultures, the plight of women is often relegated to the background. Despite the state’s efforts to improve women’s access to education, healthcare, and employment, as well as encouraging their participation in political life, these top-down initiatives, touted as modernization efforts, shape societal perceptions of femininity and masculinity (Al Dabbagh et al. 2009). In contrast, bottom-up feminist movements that challenge male domination, including that of the state, and promote women’s empowerment have a more inclusive approach. They articulate a nuanced critique of the state, forge connections between mobilized people and public spaces, and perform insurgency through daily life (Yacoubi 2016). This presentation focuses on Saudi Arabia as a case-study for examining the ways in which women come together to effect change in gender relations and influence their nation’s modernization processes. Through this examination, it becomes evident that the intersection between the sphere of academia and the sphere of activism holds immense power in combating state oppression and furthering the cause of women’s rights. Furthermore, the presentation offers a newly developed feminist perspective on gender and sexuality-based violence in relation to undemocratic states by refuting the widespread and flawed belief that academia and activism are separate and mutually exclusive (Collins 2012). It asserts that, particularly in a context where women’s rights movements, gatherings, and individual freedom of expression are suppressed, such as in Saudi Arabia, the intersection between feminist academic inquiry and activism is critical in informing and inspiring research. This convergence guarantees a symbiotic exchange between research theory, lived experiences, and frontline activism, making it feasible to tackle state violence (Sobande 2018).

As Part of the Panel: (Trans-)national Feminist Organizing in the Past and Future

Lecture: Between Political Activism and Everyday Practice: Queer Care as Practice of Resistance

Queer people often live alone at an early age and are less likely to have children than heteronormative couples, as kinship, relationship models and other meaningful bonds are often constructed in opposition to social norms (Moreira 2016; Roseneil 2004; Roseneil and Budgeon 2004). State regulations are guided by notions of the hetero-cis-endo-normative bio-family, making it difficult to provide for elder and health care (Hines and Santos 2018; Moreira 2018; Nay 2019). Legal and equality policy successes are often characterised by an adaptation to hetero-cis-normative structures and a return to the private sphere, but thereby create further precarisation tendencies (Laufenberg 2012; Nay 2019; Weibel 2021).

In the everyday worlds of queer people, this creates a special status for practices of (self-)care, as through these solidarity-based forms of action and queer life designs become possible in the context of a “good life” (Fisher and Tronto 1990, p. 40). With the concept of thinking with care, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa expresses that we are in constant care relationships with something or someone and thus creates the basis of a solidary thinking with care that counteracts marginalisation (La Bellacasa 2017, p. 71).
Jeffrey Weeks, Brian Heaphy and Catherine Donovan argue that “through interactions in the social worlds they inhabit, non-heterosexuals shape new ways of understanding their relationships and acquire the new skills necessary to affirm the validity of different ways of life” (Weeks et al. 2001, p. 25). Queer lifestyles can thus be framed within a social movement that strives to question and transform existing social norms and ideas.

This contribution aims to show how queer care can be interpreted within social movements, but also as such. With the help of participatory observations and semi-structured interviews, practices of (self-)care will be examined at Prides, in queer feminist collectives and cafés, in flat-sharing communities as well as in friendships and partnerships. In this way, the question is explored of how queer care gives rise to, shapes and makes possible meaningful bonds (Thelen 2014) and their (political) ideas of kinship and belonging, among other things, and can thus be interpreted as a resistant practice in the sense of thinking and being thought of in solidarity.

References:

Binder, Beate; Hess, Sabine (2018): Politiken der Für_Sorge – Für_Sorge als Politik: Einige einleitende Überlegungen. In: Beate Binder (Ed.): Care: Praktiken und Politiken der Fürsorge. Ethnographische und geschlechtertheoretische Perspektiven. Leverkusen: Budrich Barbara, pp. 9–32.

Fisher, Berenice; Tronto, Joan C. (1990): Toward a Feminist Theory of Care. In: Emily K. Abel (Ed.): Circles of care. Work and identity in women’s lives. Albany, N.Y.: State Univ. of New York Press (SUNY series on women and work), pp. 35–62.

Hines, Sally; Santos, Ana Cristina (2018): Trans* policy, politics and research: The UK and Portugal. In: Critical Social Policy 38 (1), pp. 35–56. DOI: 10.1177/0261018317732880.

La Bellacasa, María Puig de (2017): Matters of Care. Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press (Posthumanities, 41).

Laufenberg, Mike (2012): Communities of Care. Queere Politiken der Reproduktion. In: LuXemburg Gesellschaftsanalyse und linke Praxis (4). Available online at https://www.zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/communities-of-care-queere-politiken-der- reproduktion/, last checked on 24.02.2021.

Moreira, Luciana (2016): Queering Spanish Families: Friendship as a Transgeressive Network among Lesbians. In: M. Stosic und S. Panayotov (Ed.): Proceedings from the Summer School for Sexualities, Cultures and Politics 2015. Belgrade: IPAK.Center, pp. 65–73.

Moreira, Luciana (2018): Cuidadania Íntima, Género y Sexualidad: Construyendo Relaciones Lésbicas en el Estado Español. In: Revista Latino-americana de Geografia e Genero 9 (2), pp. 189–209.

Nay, Yv E. (2019): Die heterosexuelle Familie als Norm. Das heteronormative Regime der rechtlichen Regulierung gleichgeschlechtlicher Elternschaft. In: Sozial extra 43 (6), pp. 372– 375. DOI: 10.1007/s12054-019-00224-y.

Roseneil, Sasha (2004): Why we should Care about Friends: An Argument for Queering the Care Imaginary in Social Policy. In: Social Policy & Society 3 (4), pp. 409–419. DOI: 10.1017/S1474746404002039.

Roseneil, Sasha; Budgeon, Shelley (2004): Cultures of Intimacy and Care beyond ‘the Family’: Personal Life and Social Change in the Early 21st Century. In: Current Sociology 52 (2), pp. 135–159. DOI: 10.1177/0011392104041798.

Thelen, Tatjana (2014): Care/Sorge. Konstruktion, Reproduktion und Auflösung bedeutsamer Bindungen. Bielefeld: transcript (Kultur und soziale Praxis).

Weeks, Jeffrey; Heaphy, Brian; Donovan, Catherine (2001): Same sex intimacies. Families of choice and other life experiments. London: Routledge. Available online at http://site.ebrary.com/lib/alltitles/docDetail.action?docID=2002814.

Weibel, Fleur (2021): ‘Müsst ihr jetzt noch heiraten?’. Eine Betrachtung der besonderen Situation von homosexuellen Brautpaaren in der Schweiz. In: Michael Wutzler und Jacqueline Klesse (Ed.): Paarbeziehungen heute: Kontinuität und Wandel. 1st edition. Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, pp. 100–122.

As Part of the Panel: Political Activism in its Diversity

Student Assistant

Lecture: Queer Claims-making in the Age of the Backlash in Austria

The paper focuses on how actors in queer and feminist organisations in Vienna, Austria, navigate their claims and available resources under adverse conditions. The adversity stems from, as I aim to analyze from a queer Marxian perspective, a range of challenges faced by these political actors. One central such challenge, exacerbated during my fieldwork from 2021 to 2023, is the cutting of state subsidies for queer organisations.

The funding cuts complicate the financial situation of a range of actors who were able to provide mental-health consulting, safe-houses, refugee support and a range of other crucial social infrastructures. Faced with cuts and the projectification of state-funding, the paper asks about the possibilities for claims-making among queer movements in Vienna. Can they translate their struggles into fundable activities? Does the state abandonment allow them to focus on their politics and attract new supporters? Or do they split their work into what one interlocutor called “well-behaved [brav]” services on the one hand and imperceptible but radical politics on the other?

The presentation closes with a discussion of redistribution at a time of neo-national, gender-conservative and productivist politics. The age of the backlash contrasts with an increasing strength and volume of queer claim-making, as exemplified by several mass demonstrations led by feminist movements in Vienna in recent years.

As Part of the Panel: Queer(ing) Claims Making

Lecture: The Forgotten Revolution at the Kitchen Table. On the Resistant Legacy of the Feminist Visions and Practices of the Brief East German Women’s Movement

“Without us, no state can be made” (Fischer/Lux 1990). – The demand of the short women’s movement of the GDR was caught up in light speed by historical developments and yet a state was made without it: the united democratic-capitalist Federal Republic. The existence of the brief women’s movement in the GDR, the later East German women’s movement around the Independent Women’s Association (UFV) and feminist organizations in the period of upheaval after 1989/90 is hardly remembered today. Their conditions of emergence, feminist visions and contradictory overlaps are hardly taken into account by large parts of social (transformation) research and are also often unknown to feminist activists who currently organize themselves. So where is (post-)socialism in feminism?

Against this background, the lecture deals with a socio-theoretical reconstruction of (post-)socialist emancipatory visions and practices of the short women’s movement of the GDR as well as the later East German women’s movement as a “resistant feminist heritage” (Lembke 2022). The socio-political conditions of forgetting and the contradictory superimpositions and after-effects of (post-)socialist feminist visions up to the present day – in Central and Eastern Europe, in Germany and beyond – are inquired into.

As Part of the Panel: Contradictions and Conflicts in Feminist Movements

Workshop: Feminism Needs a Voice – Choir Workshop with Pola Dobler and the Witches of Westend Choir

FLINTA* are invited to sing together with the choir. After a short insight into feminist choir work, the participants will rehearse two polyphonic pieces that will be performed in front of the conference audience in the evening. In this context, both substantive insights are provided, and feminist demands are transformed into sound. Empowerment, on the other hand, is also experienced physically and creatively: Each individual voice becomes an essential part of the greater whole, creating a shared soundscape that aims to have political impact.

No prior knowledge required.

Lecture-Performance: Self-blame Catapult: An Artistic Examination of Female Poverty in Old Age and Forms of Everyday Resistance

Old-age poverty is female. In 2021, the average German old-age pension payments for women (832 euros West/1072 euros East) were significantly lower than those for men (1218 euros West/1143 euros East). Reasons for this inequality include a gender-specific labor market, the still prevalent Male Breadwinner Model, and the increasing dismantling of the welfare state. Living in old-age poverty entails, on the one hand, managing with limited resources. On the other hand, old-age poverty also has emotional effects on those affected. Feelings of failure, shame, guilt, fear of the future, worries, feelings of inferiority, loneliness, or even melancholy regarding denied future prospects are also consequences of the aforementioned structural issues that deeply affect individuals. The cultural scholar, Dr. des. Alexandra Rau, along with the artist Maria Berauer, examines this affective dimension of experiences with old-age poverty through a lecture performance. Drawing from interview material collected as part of the DFG research project “Precarious Retirement” (led by Prof. Dr. Irene Götz) at LMU, women from various backgrounds are given a voice. How does old-age poverty feel for those affected, and what effects do these feelings have on their everyday scope of action?

Through a combination of ethnographic portraits, theoretical text fragments, and artistic interventions, the lecture performance not only highlights the structural aspect of female old-age poverty but also aims to make it physically palpable. Furthermore, it also explores collective action perspectives. The performance thus aims ultimately to point to possible voids in social movements that span along the gender category. While female old-age poverty is indeed addressed as a cross-cutting issue in the context of feminist movements, it is primarily women who speak there and denounce old-age poverty as a potential future scenario. The current subject experiencing old-age poverty appears to be relatively invisible in public debates. The examination of the affective dimension of female old-age poverty ultimately reveals that the solidarity and political mobilization of affected women are hindered by field-specific emotional states.

The portraits and text fragments will be read in dialogue by the author Alexandra Rau (Munich), the actress Shirli Volk (Munich) and the performer Sara van der Weck (Munich), and physically and performatively staged by the artist Maria Berauer (Munich).

Roundtable: Different – Together: Antiracist Feminisms in Conversation

Lecture-Performance: Self-blame Catapult: An Artistic Examination of Female Poverty in Old Age and Forms of Everyday Resistance

Old-age poverty is female. In 2021, the average German old-age pension payments for women (832 euros West/1072 euros East) were significantly lower than those for men (1218 euros West/1143 euros East). Reasons for this inequality include a gender-specific labor market, the still prevalent Male Breadwinner Model, and the increasing dismantling of the welfare state. Living in old-age poverty entails, on the one hand, managing with limited resources. On the other hand, old-age poverty also has emotional effects on those affected. Feelings of failure, shame, guilt, fear of the future, worries, feelings of inferiority, loneliness, or even melancholy regarding denied future prospects are also consequences of the aforementioned structural issues that deeply affect individuals. The cultural scholar, Dr. des. Alexandra Rau, along with the artist Maria Berauer, examines this affective dimension of experiences with old-age poverty through a lecture performance. Drawing from interview material collected as part of the DFG research project “Precarious Retirement” (led by Prof. Dr. Irene Götz) at LMU, women from various backgrounds are given a voice. How does old-age poverty feel for those affected, and what effects do these feelings have on their everyday scope of action?

Through a combination of ethnographic portraits, theoretical text fragments, and artistic interventions, the lecture performance not only highlights the structural aspect of female old-age poverty but also aims to make it physically palpable. Furthermore, it also explores collective action perspectives. The performance thus aims ultimately to point to possible voids in social movements that span along the gender category. While female old-age poverty is indeed addressed as a cross-cutting issue in the context of feminist movements, it is primarily women who speak there and denounce old-age poverty as a potential future scenario. The current subject experiencing old-age poverty appears to be relatively invisible in public debates. The examination of the affective dimension of female old-age poverty ultimately reveals that the solidarity and political mobilization of affected women are hindered by field-specific emotional states.

The portraits and text fragments will be read in dialogue by the author Alexandra Rau (Munich), the actress Shirli Volk (Munich) and the performer Sara van der Weck (Munich), and physically and performatively staged by the artist Maria Berauer (Munich).

Instrumental & DJ Fusion Act
w/ Ish.Use, Pheli Sommer & Kim_Twiddle

Lecture: From Service to Struggles. Organising of Nurses and their Departures towards Care Movements

For more than 100 years, nurses have organised themselves in organisations at national and international level in order to achieve greater recognition and professionalization, and to counteract the stigmatisation of their work. Since the 1970s, however, there has been a trade unionist turn among organised nurses and struggles for better pay. The reason was often a restructuring of the health care system, especially the hospital system, and an intensification of nursing work due to cost minimisation and a shortage of personnel in health care institutions. In this context, the hierarchies within the hospital regime, the trend towards informalisation or contract work, and the differences between local and migrant care workers stand in the way of the formation of a collective identity and the solidarity of different groups of care workers and hospital workers.

With their struggles, care workers create visibility for themselves and their concerns and construct themselves as political collective subjects. At the same time, the more frequent strikes in the service and care sector have led to a feminisation of labour struggles.

Increasingly, protests have been accompanied by a politicisation of care work within neoliberal hospital management, a redefinition of the care ethos, and the patriarchal, class-based and racialised definition of service. Demands are increasingly moving beyond the conventional trade union repertoire of labour rights, payment and workplace conditions to issues of care quality.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the systemic ruthlessness towards care workers through overwork and lack of safeguards triggered an unprecedented wave of mobilisation and protest in many countries, partly within the framework of trade unions, partly explicitly independent of established unions. Strategies of mass mobilisation, collective power building and “deep” or transformational organising were used transnationally for the first time, with the aim of quality care and “health not profits”. In several countries, new alliances were formed between different hospital and health system workers, patients and ordinary citizens, with the potential for new health and care movements that go far beyond hospital labour struggles.

As Part of the Panel: (Trans-)national Feminist Organizing in the Past and Future

Lecture: Saving the law? Debates on Gender Equality and the Rule of Law in the Polish Opposition

The Polish opposition is currently struggling to develop strategies to force the authoritarian- nationalist party “Law and Justice” (PiS) out of government in the elections in the fall of 2023. The narratives with which the opposition is trying to work are controversial: Is it a matter of mobilizing all forces as a united opposition against a common opponent and presenting itself as an alternative that will end the “crisis of the rule of law”- or is it rather a matter of emphasizing differences between different opposition forces precisely in this situation? Using debates on gender politics as a case study, the article explores the role that different political actors ascribe to law and the rule of law when it comes to establishing justice.

As Part of the Panel: Law – Justice – Gender in Social Movements and Political Struggles

Panel Discussion: Gender Matters in Social Movements: A Conversation at the Interface of Academia and Activism

Documentary screening of „The Sisters of Protest“