Gender Democracy

The present publication “For Democracy” outlines and analyzes the state of democracy worldwide as well as the possibilities of democracy assistance.

Women’s bodies have regularly been – and still are – the central target of conservative and fundamentalist ideology and praxis. Although the individual right to self-determination has always been shaped by social and cultural norms and legal frameworks, it is currently being determined more than ever by reproductive technologies and medical issues.

The concept of "gender backlash" encompasses activities pursued by a multitude of different local initiatives all over Central and Eastern Europe, which strongly promote tradition over equality. In many cases these groups appear to be backed and inspired both by influential US-American “pro life” organisations as well as the Kremlin’s "Gay-rope" propaganda, which aims to discredit the European Union as a place of moral decline.

We are honoured to present conference materials of the Second International Gender Workshop "Overcoming Gender Backlash: Experiences of Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Poland" organized and hosted by the Kyiv office in October 2013. In this publication you shall find analyses focused on gender education, LGBT issues, as well as sexual and reproductive health and rights of women in the respective countries.

In post-war periods and in the aftermath of serious, systematic human rights violations, gender-based forms of violence are usually forgotten during the processing of the past and reconciliation phase. Yet, only when they are paid due regard can lasting peace processes be established. Given this, it is important to subject transitional justice institu-tions and approaches to a detailed review. The results: until now, transitional justice has, in many places, failed to address the gender dimensions but increasingly so the issues of inequality, hierarchies and violence patterns. This study details these problems and presents the resulting challenges facing politicians and society.

What does Beijing Platform for Action mean for women today? Which elements of its language, which goals of the documents became part of the women’s movement at local, national, and global levels of activism? Does it mean that the Platform for Action, agreed upon in 1995, and considered the most revolutionary international manifesto of the support for women’s rights is now outdated? Has the document that initiated the presence of the women’s organizations within the international public space has the special value only for the first generations of women’s NGOs but is meaningless for the younger women? The Heinrich Boell Foundation commissioned a study that indicates what is the influence and perception of the Beijing Platform for Action in Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine and the Czech Republic.

The twentieth anniversary of the 1989 breakthrough is an occasion for summaries. The year 2009 was full of intense debates about achievements and failures, successes and lost opportunities of the past two decades. In the countries of the former Eastern Bloc those debates were a sort of closure on history. In the context of broadly publicised disputes about hierarchy of events and symbols (the Polish Round Table vs. the fall of the Berlin Wall) and the lists of those deserving most honours (whether and why Wałęsa or Gorbachev ought to be included), both the role and significance of women in the events of 1989, and their experiences during the twenty years of transformation constituted a marginal topic in the anniversary discourse.

Looking at the changes initiated in 1989, such as the introduction of market economy and the adoption of neoliberal ideology as the foundation of the new political, economic and social system, it is important to see how they influenced the situation of men and women. The publication Gender Issues 2009: Gender Equality Discourse in Times of Transformation, 1989-2009: the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine is yet another initiative of the Heinrich Böll Foundation regional Office in Warsaw trying to fill this gap and, at the same time, it is also the result of the Foundation’s cooperation with partner organisations from Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Ukraine, which, since 2007, have been monitoring the progress of the implementation of gender equality politics and adherence to EU standards in this field.