Publications of Andrea Krizsan

Contesting Gender Equality in Domestic-Violence Policy Debates: Comparing Three Countries in Central and Eastern Europe

This chapter looks at opposition to gender equality as a component of political opportunity structures, a factor that conditions women’s movement mobilization either by limiting the opportunities available to it or by serving as its catalyst. In order to understand how opposition can become an aspect of political opportunities we analyze opposition to women’s movement mobilizatin for domestic violence policy progress in four countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The analysis adopts a wide understanding of opposition to gender equality, to include not just explicitly articulated challenges to gender equality claims but also challenges that at face value do not address gender equality, but still indirectly threaten a gender equality understanding of domestic violence policy. In order to understand contestation to gender equality in this field the chapter looks at frames opposing a gendered understanding of domestic violence, and actors behind them, state as well as non-state opponents. To understand dynamics between opposition and movement strategies it looks at coping and reaction mechanisms used by movement actors in the presence of opposition. The chapter argues first that opposition influences the meanings articulated by movement actors in their claims. Discursive structures that are oppositional or oppositional framing used by strong actors set boundaries to meanings that can be articulated in feminist mobilization for change. Secondly, it shows that opposition also influences strategies of mobilization including coalition formation, institutional alliances, as well as the mechanisms of influence. Overall this chapter demonstrates the importance of looking at opposition over time rather than as a snapshot. Over time, changes in the specific form opposition takes, and the extent it is gendered, and mobilization patterns connected to it, highlight aspects of temporality of opposition and the extent to which it is historically contingent, and dynamically constructed in arenas populated by movements and their allies, states and non-state opposition actors.

Towards a Conceptual Framework for Struggles over Democracy in Backsliding States: Gender Equality Policy in Central Eastern Europe

Trends of de-democratization across Europe and the Americas are emerging, along with opposition to gender equality and threats to previous gender equality policy gains. Yet de-democratization has been barely analysed through the lens of gender equality, and so far, efforts to systematically analyse the implications for inclusive democracy and the representation of gender interests are lacking. Backsliding in gender policies, and new forms of feminist engagement with hostile states and publics, also raise new challenges to the literature on gender and politics. In this article we explore gender equality policy backsliding in fragile democracies. Backsliding and de-democratization processes in these contexts pose a series of important challenges to how we have thought about gender policy change in progressive, mainly Western democratic contexts until now. We propose a conceptual framework discussing these two conceptually interesting realms: backsliding in gender equality policies, and feminist responses to backsliding. We illustrate our framework with empirical observations from four backsliding or temporarily backsliding Central and Eastern European countries: Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Romania. With our article we aim to contribute to the understanding of gendered aspects of de-democratization both in gender and politics literature and in mainstream democratization literature.

Mobilizing for Policy Change: Women's Movements in Central and Eastern European Domestic Violence Policy Struggles

The aim of this edited volume is to explore and understand the influence of women's movement mobilization on domestic violence policy change in Central and Eastern Europe. Fifteen years ago domestic violence was barely present on the policy agenda of countries in the CEE region. By 2005 most countries of the region adopted laws and policies addressing it and proceeded with implementation. Domestic violence policy processes can be seen as one of the most remarkable successes of women's movements in the region, which may stand to challenge skepticism around the policy efficiency of women's movements in Central and Eastern Europe. While variation certainly exists in the extent to which policy change that ultimately took place responds to women's rights concerns, there is undoubted progress in all countries of the region. This volume addresses a series of questions: what are the dynamics that led to movement successes in the region? Which movements and the strategies they adopt are successful in promoting progressive policy change? Why do some movements manage to secure policy change that is women's rights friendly, while others lose control beyond setting the agenda? How do alliances, institutionalization and framing make a difference? And how patterns of achieving policy influence resemble or differ from patterns found in Western post-industrialized states? Are Central and Eastern European domestic violence policy processes any different? The book develops a theoretical framework explaining the links between mobilization and change, followed by the portrayal of in-depth case studies on Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, and Romania.

Frames in Contestation: International Human Rights Norms and Domestic Violence Policy Debates in Five Countries of Central and Eastern Europe

The article looks at the translation of international norms on domestic violence to the national level in five Central and Eastern European countries. It argues that translation brings a concept of domestic violence, which stretches gender equality ideas underpinning international norms so as to be easier to endorse by mainstream policy actors, and results in policies framed in degendered individual rights terms. The potential for keeping gender equality in focus is then guaranteed by gendering policy processes through empowerment of gender equality actors at all stages. Absence of ownership of the policy by gender equality actors risks co-optation by frames contesting gender equality.

Equality Architectures in Central and Eastern European Countries: A Framework for Analyzing Political Intersectionality in Europe

Equality institutions are major arenas for analyzing political intersectionality. This article looks at equality institutions in the context of European equality policy changes since 2000 and argues for an institutional typology that differentiates gender equality machineries from anti-discrimination bodies and consultative equality bodies. These functionally different equality institutions build up into larger equality institutional architectures in which the different components serve complementary strategies in pursuing complex gender equality policies. Equality institutional architectures vary in how they institutionalize the relationships between gender inequality and other inequality categories. Layered, hierarchical, and integrated models of equality institutional architectures are identified as different in institutionalizing the intersections and hierarchies of different inequality axes. The article argues that analyzing equality institutions through such a conceptual framework contributes to a more nuanced research agenda for analyzing intersectionality in policy practice, one that could be applicable, beyond equality institutions, also to the analysis of policy texts and civil society mobilization patterns. The article illustrates the developed conceptual framework through a comparative analysis of gender equality institutional architectures emerging in the last twenty years in the ten new European Union member states of Central and Eastern Europe.

Europeanization in Making Policies against Domestic Violence in Central and Eastern Europe

This article looks at how Europe matters in the development of policies against domestic violence, a gender equality field outside the core European Union (EU) conditionality criteria. By analyzing the concrete workings and uses of Europe’s domestic violence policy-making in five Central and Eastern European countries, it identifies three mechanisms of Europeanization in the field and shows how together they work to expand the reach of the EU to this policy realm. The findings point toward an understanding of Europeanization based on social learning and dynamic, interactive processes of constructing what membership in the EU means in terms of domestic violence policy processes.

Gender Equality Policy or Gender Mainstreaming? The Case of Hungary on the Road to an Enlarged Europe

The aim of this article is to analyze some of the core conceptual and implementation issues underpinning the process of introducing gender mainstreaming strategy in Hungary. It examines the approach of Hungarian policy makers to gender mainstreaming and evaluates the political framing of some crucial aspects of gender equality. Our argument in this article is twofold. First, we observe that the concept of gender mainstreaming as a cross-sectoral and comprehensive policy tool for achieving gender equality has only been sporadically present and this has mostly been located at the rhetorical level. Hungary has no comprehensive gender equality strategy and no distinctive gender equality policy instruments currently in place. Rather, the promotion of equal opportunity on all grounds has become a powerful policy approach in the last two to three years, often neglecting the specific requirements of gender equality. Secondly, we argue that the influence of the European Union (EU) accession process has had two stages, as far as gender equality policy is concerned in Hungary. The first stage, has referred primarily to the de jure harmonization of Hungarian legislation with relevant EU directives, but has brought very little harmonization at the policy level, and brought limited de facto realization of the rights imposed by the directives. The second stage, identified from mid-2003, is coterminous with Hungary joining the different EU level policy processes. This second stage signaled a shift from legislative harmonization to a more focused policy approach. This stage may be characterized as a direct process of EU-isation on Hungarian policy concepts and tools, such as gender mainstreaming. However, it is too early to judge the practical implications of this development.