Mémoire
| Résumé : | An increasingly polarised European Parliament (EP) has witnessed the emergence of campaigns mobilising against gender ideology in the European Union (EU). Anti-gender campaigns pose challenges for progressive groups' advocacy efforts to advance on gender and sexual rights, and more precisely, on Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). The present thesis focuses on the impact of rising anti-gender campaigns on progressive groups’ SRHR advocacy in the EP, within the context of two FEMM Committee (Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality) texts on SRHR: the Estrela report (European Parliament, 2013) voted down in Plenary in 2013, and the 2021 Matić report (European Parliament, 2020a) that is waiting for the Plenary vote.To do so, the study conducts a review of the literature on the origins of the anti-gender movement and connects the Estrela report’s defeat and 2010s controversies over SRHR with the emergence of right-wing populism at the EU level. While the EU is regarded as a normative power-seeking of gender equality and humans' rights, the crisis of the neoliberal system and the challenges of feminist and LGBT+ struggles, offered fertile ground for the emergence of right-wing populism and thus, the activation of the anti-gender movement. A qualitative analysis of the progressive advocacy strategies from 2013 to 2021 and the implications of the advent of right-wing populism in the European Parliament is thus proposed via a three-dimensional methodology: interviews, observation, and revision of existing documents.Progressive groups’ influential advocacy role in the EP is called into question due to the entrance of anti-gender's fear-arousing alphabet in 2013. The Estrela report constituted a wake-up call for progressive forces to counter anti-gender campaigns. Its unexpected failure first triggered a series of progressive uncontrolled attempts to fight back the anti-gender attacks that gradually metamorphosed into independent strategies noticeable in the Fred Matić report. This research contributes to scholarly debates on the evolution of progressive groups’ strategies to oppose anti-gender campaigns: while schisms of the progressive/left side are visible, evidence has been found of progressive groups' attempts to carry out a self-reflection process that has promoted research to situate the anti-gender movement as part of a broader problem that transcends EU policies. |
