Women’s/Gender Studies and Contemporary Threats to Academic Cultures: International Perspectives

Currently, we are witnessing a dramatic shift to the far-/alt-right and neo-conservatism, and an increasing popularity for illiberalism across diverse policy contexts across the globe. As a consequence of this development, the academic study of gender has been banned in some countries, such as Hungary, and in others – notably the US and the UK – state agencies and courts have taken the decision to define gender as an immutable male-female binary determined by sex assigned at birth. Yet, the implications of these developments are broader and more far-reaching. Anti-gender discourses have gained increasing prominence across multiple global contexts and are increasingly recognized as entry points to far-right political ideologies. Embedded in policy proposals, these discourses also target women’s and gender studies as an academic field including feminist, queer, trans, antiracist and post-colonial scholars. 

Against this backdrop, this special issue of the European Journal of Women’s Studies opens a space for critical reflection on the alarming contemporary conditions of women’s and gender studies and the political imaginaries informing academic cultures. We seek to explore how recent and ongoing transformations in scientific and governmental policy have affected scholarly practice, academic cultures and learning and teaching experiences, as well as how these changes have shaped the position and status of women’s/gender studies in academia. As guest co-editors, we followed a long trajectory in taking these questions seriously. Ten years ago, in 2016, we published a special issue on women’s and gender studies and changes in academic cultures, in light of the far-reaching transformations taking place in higher education and scientific policy as a result of new public management. For us, it was important to critically explore how neoliberal transformations affected both academic feminism and feminist academics. While analysing the new power dynamics in the neoliberal universities, those discussions also pointed out that women’s and gender studies as a field had sometimes benefited from the neoliberalisation of higher education in complex and ambiguous ways. Since that analysis, however, anti-gender discourses have gained increasing attention and have in diverse ways come to shape the conditions under which women’s/gender studies are conducted. 

We invite women’s and gender studies scholars to bring feminist, queer, trans, anti-racist and decolonial studies perspectives to bear on a pressing question: how can we understand the contemporary neoliberal condition in its novel guises, as it has become more or less closely interwoven with populist authoritarianism in diverse locations across the globe? Women’s and gender studies scholars in many locations can still take strategic advantage of neoliberalism to gain visibility, funding and recognition – for example through international collaborations and forms of societal engagement. However, a new mode of neoliberal efficiency is increasingly being used to legitimise cuts and closures of gender studies departments. This shift both affects the conditions in which we produce knowledge  and the questions that we can ask from critical feminist perspectives.

 In grappling with this complex shift, we ask: What differences and commonalities characterize the current conditions of women’s and gender studies across diverse contexts? What epistemological, political and ethical questions are raised by these ongoing transformations? How does the global rise of the far-right shape academic governance, and how does it intersect with the neoliberal paradigm of productivity? To what extent do these developments shed new light on longstanding debates within women’s and gender studies – for example concerning the relationship between knowledge and politics, or the possibilities and challenges generated by the institutionalisation of feminism? 

Today, women’s and gender studies increasingly find themselves at the centre of broader anti-gender and authoritarian political projects in many parts of the world. These developments are transnational in scope but interact with local configurations of institutions, practices and actors in complex ways, posing significant analytical and political challenges. Yet, there remains a lack of research that explores the changing conditions of women’s and gender studies scholarship across local, regional and transnational contexts. We know even less about the variations, overlaps and tensions that characterise these dynamics in diverse international settings. In light of these transformations, we invite scholars to revisit discussions of the “neoliberal academy” in relation to contemporary anti-gender politics and explore the following, as well as other, themes:

• Transformation of academic labour and knowledge production under conditions of rising far-/alt-right influence and governance
• Negotiations, strategies and complicities of feminist scholars under increasing anti-genderism
• Conceptualisation of the contemporary forms of anti-gender politics under women’s and gender studies especially through concepts such as illiberalism, authoritarianism, authoritarian neoliberalism, fascism, and neo-fascism
• Epistemic, political, and ethical issues raised by the rise of anti-feminism and anti-genderism and its relationship to neoliberal emphasis on productivity, impact, and income generation; including of the university governance’s emphasis on:
•   neoliberal “buzzwords” such as excellence, interdisciplinarity, flexibility, competition, and internationalisation
•   mechanisms of ranking and rating, structures of auditing and quality control, and logics of individualisation and metricisation, the recognition of expertise and academic authority
•  Illiberalism in higher education and governmental policy on the institutionalisation of women’s and gender studies 

We invite abstracts of 150-200 words. Abstracts should be sent to all three special issue editors: demet.gulcicek.1 warwick.ac uk; sabine.grenz univie.ac at; mia.liinason genus.lu se 

• Deadline for abstracts: 1 Nov, 2026 
• Deadline for articles: 31 March, 2027 
• Expected publication date: May/June 2028 

All articles will be subject to the regular review process organized by the journal. Article length must be between 6,000 and 7,000 inclusive of bibliography, notes etc. and should not have been published previously.

Contact details for special issue editors:

Assist. Prof. Demet Gülçiçek, Honorary Researcher, Department of Gender Studies, University of Warwick, UK & Department of Sociology, Munzur University, Turkey, demet.gulcicek.1 warwick.ac uk

Assoc.Prof. Sabine Grenz, Research unit for interdisciplinary Gender Studies/Department of Education, University of Vienna, Austria, sabine.grenz univie.ac at

Professor Mia Liinason, Division of Gender Studies, Lund University, Sweden, mia.liinason genus.lu se