Integrated report on the contributions of feminist theory and conceptual framework

The report is structured as follows: (I) The first part gives an overview of current antifeminist
and anti-gender movements, backlash theory, and democratic backsliding to briefly map the
current challenges and problems facing scholarly, activist, and policy efforts towards gender
equality in Europe. (II) The second part delves into feminist approaches to democracy against
the background of a genealogical and normative analysis of democracy within the framework
of liberal European democracy. This part reconstructs key feminist arguments and criticisms
of liberal democracy and offers alternative tools to transform it from within. This part is divided
into two sections. The first one reconstructs some prominent classical ideas and theories of
Western and non-Western feminisms for the engendering of democracy in three main fields:
citizenship, participation, and representation. The second section discusses significant
contemporary feminist democratic frameworks, such as ecofeminism, social reproductive
theory and care ethics, and queer and trans feminism, which broaden Western notions of
democracy by advancing new concepts and perspectives. (III) The third part provides an
intersectional understanding of gender injustice in the context of global inequalities,
specifically Eastern & Western European inequalities. This section engages with the crucial
contributions of different feminist traditions to intersectionality theory. It reconstructs the vital
contributions of non-Western feminist theories to intersectionality politics, such as Black
Feminism, Postcolonial Feminism, Feminist Disability Studies, and Roma Feminism. (IV)
Finally, the fourth part explores the project of a feminist pushback against the antifeminist and
anti-gender backlash for a new age of democracy. The final section engages with gender justice
as a utopian concept and the normative dilemmas that beset a new age of democracy. Feminist
democratic critical ideals of citizenship, participation, and representation reshape and inform
alternative concepts of justice by reimagining democracy through the lens of intersectionalit