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ID:
193142
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Summary/Abstract |
Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine represents a critical juncture for the role gender plays in European security. We argue that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not only gendered in the way other conflict are, but the war's essential novelty lies in the fact that it is explicitly fought for the so-called traditional values, against gender and sexual equalities. Drawing on local decolonial insights and theoretical concepts of liberal/illiberal gender orders, we contrast the Russian neo-traditionalism with the Ukrainian account of the Russian invasion, while seeking to uncover how an imagination of Europe is constitutive for these gendered discourses. We show that the construction of the narratives is a circular process of ever more pronounced neo-traditionalism by Russia which sees Europe as its decadent Other. We demonstrate that these discourses have real consequences as the Russian illiberal gender order justifies and wages real war against Ukraine and gender is turning into the central battlefield both in the figurative and the literal sense of the word. Russian accounts contrast with Ukraine's hybridised, but increasingly emancipatory discourses and practices which have been playing a fundamental role in Ukraine's resistance to the Russian invasion.
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2 |
ID:
191724
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Summary/Abstract |
Although firmly established as a global norm, the Women, Peace and Security Agenda (WPS) has been largely driven by the global North attempting to solve insecurities in the global South. Postcolonial feminist research shows that this western-centrism and colonial legacies continue to dominate both WPS practices and knowledge production. This article focuses on WPS in central Europe, a previously ignored ‘non-region’ that remains outside the North–South divide. Combining postcolonial and decolonial approaches with feminist institutionalism, we interrogate what WPS becomes in the Czech, Polish and Slovakian contexts characterized by illiberal populist and anti-gender governance and politics. Building on interviews with key stakeholders, on document analysis and our own encounters, we argue that the three countries understand WPS as key to their western belongingness and reliability as international partners. As a result, they replicate rather than challenge ‘western’ WPS thinking. The resulting National Action Plans are centred around women's participation and security problems ‘out there’. This lack of localization enables them to stay immune to the anti-gender alliances, but limits the engagement of feminist civil society. Amidst Russian imperial aggression, central Europe's WPS agendas serve as mere paper tigers and are failing to address the multitude of domestic and regional gendered insecurities.
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