Abstract
Over the last decade, gender has become a surprisingly charged topic that has drawn sharp lines in the political landscape of Europe and beyond. Central and Eastern Europe have played a critical role in this, given that the governments of Russia, Poland, and Hungary have rejected “Western gender ideology,” while in other countries of the region anti-gender sentiments and political forces have also grown, but without dominating government policy or having such an ideological emphasis. It is not the first time that this backlash happens in a postsocialist, or other, context.
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Notes
- 1.
The German case is unique because restrictions in the former GDR resulted from a compromise between East and West German politicians following protests in the East. As a result, abortion rights in the unified Germany were more liberal compared to those under the former West German law but more restrictive compared to late GDR law. A similar liberalization occurred in relation to LGBT rights, which in the GDR were only established in the late 1980s. These are two of the rare examples during the unification process in which mutual adaptation instead of an institutional transfer from West to East occurred.
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Bluhm, K., Pickhan, G., Stypińska, J., Wierzcholska, A. (2021). Introduction. In: Bluhm, K., Pickhan, G., Stypińska, J., Wierzcholska, A. (eds) Gender and Power in Eastern Europe. Societies and Political Orders in Transition. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53130-0_1
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