Women's human rights in Russia: outmoded battlegrounds, or new sites of contentious politics?

Turbine, Vikki

doi:10.1080/21599165.2015.1064395

Cited by 13 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 29 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…A number of studies point out the relevance of further exploring the dynamics between feminist womenʼs organizing and anti-feminist (conservative) womenʼs actors within authoritarian/hybrid regimes. Empirical examples of GONGOs in hybrid or authoritarian regimes emphasize how these governmentally-operated or loyal actors limit space for oppositional actors in civil society, serving as mechanisms for regimes to co-opt civic space, as studies on China (Zhang 2015) and Russia (Turbine 2015) show. Furthermore, the case of Uganda (Tripp 2001) illustrates how womenʼs organizations in hybrid regimes may to a certain extent succeed in advancing womenʼs status while at the same time facing various constraints on maintaining their activism, such as cooptation or legal restrictions.…”

Section: Feminist Strategies Women-gongos and Authoritarian Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%

Womenʼs Rights vs. Gender Justice? Exploring Oppositional Womenʼs Organizations and the Reshaping of Feminist Engagement in De-democratizing Turkey

Ehrhart¹

2022

ZfM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Reflective of a wider, global trend of changing civil society space and anti-gender backlash against womenʼs rights, research is increasingly interested in exploring the dynamics and implications of hybrid and authoritarian regimes strategies toward civil society, and womenʼs organizations in particular. Nevertheless, few have focused on studying the role of governmental womenʼs organizations – so-called women-GONGOs - as mechanisms of regime strategies, such as in the case of competitive-authoritarian Turkey where women-GONGOs aim to constrain civil society space and feminist, gender equality-oriented discourse and practice. In this study, the aim is to explore how feminist, oppositional womenʼs organizations, despite their “outsider” positions in Turkeyʼs civil society, use and reshape feminist strategies to adapt, renegotiate or resist women-GONGOs as mechanisms of control, co-optation and regime interference.Based on in-depth interviews with 21 womenʼs organizations in Turkey, the study finds that “outsider”, feminist womenʼs organizations in competitive-authoritarian Turkey perceive the influence of women-GONGOs as central to possibilities and limitations in civil society and womenʼs organizing. Consequently, interviews show that “outsiders” employ a variety of feminist strategies, mostly in combination, to create or maintain their activism and operations within the Turkish de-democratization context, for example turning to grassroots in combination with finding new alliances, or connected to sustaining activities within broader democratization movements. However, the study suggests that the changing space of civil society in Turkey affects these “outsiders” in different ways; for example service-oriented womenʼs organizations are less constrained in their feminist strategies compared to claims-making “outsiders”. Lastly, the study illustrates how the dominant role of women-GONGOs in Turkey impacts feminist discourse and practice of “outsiders”, thereby providing empirical insights and theoretical contributions to better understanding transformations of feminist engagement in Turkey and similar gendered de-democratization contexts across the Mediterranean and beyond.

show abstract

Section: Feminist Strategies Women-gongos and Authoritarian Resiliencementioning

confidence: 99%