with Professor Elżbieta Korolczuk
Södertörn University & American Studies Center, Warsaw University
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
11am to 12:15pm
Please join us for a special session of the Gender & Transformation workshop, sponsored by
Brooklyn College, Gender & Women’s Studies Program series, Feminist Futures: Studying Eastern Europe.
On Zoom, Registration Required, Here
In recent years patriarchal gender norms and ideologies have become an integral part of the right-wing populist parties programs. Right-wing leaders, including Jarosław Kaczyński, Victor Orban and Giorgia Melloni have invested in creating their image as defenders of traditional family and the nation against the excesses of what they call “gender ideology.” Such a stance have helped them to gain and sustain public support: in a 2019 opinion poll researchers asked about the biggest threats for Poland in the 21st century, and the majority of young men and older people declared that their biggest fear is the threat of the “gender ideology and LGBT movement.” In the Polish context, fighting against “gender ideology” has become a central objective of the right-wing coalition which came to power in2016. Anti-gender campaigns in the country have involved efforts to impose a total ban on abortion, assaults on LGBTQ rights, the demonization of ethnic minorities, and interventions in education and knowledge production.
Elżbieta Korolczuk is an Associate professor in sociology, working at Södertörn University in Stockholm and at the American Studies Center, Warsaw University. Her research interests involve social movements, civil society and gender. She is currently engaged in a projectfunded by the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies, which focuses on grassroots activism in the context of multiple crises in Central and Eastern Europe and Sweden (SUSTAIN ACTION), and studies feminist responses to anti-gender and anti-democratic forces in Horizon Europe project (CCINDLE). Her most recent publications include a co-authored volume co-edited Women’s Rebellion. Black Protests and Women’s Strikes, published by European Solidarity Centre in 2019 (with Beata Kowalska, Jennifer Ramme and Claudia Snochowska- Gonzalez) and a monograph co-authored with Agnieszka Graff Anti-gender Politics in the Populist Moment (Routledge 2021). Korolczuk is also longtime women’s and human rights activist and a commentator.
Sponsored also by Brooklyn College’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences; Departments of Anthropology, History, Judaic Studies, Modern Languages and Literatures, Philosophy, Political Science, Sociology; and the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities, Brooklyn Phi Beta Kappa Chapter, the Women’s Center, and the LGBTQ+ Resource Center
