Connected for Gender Equality: Digital Learning and Solidarity Building

Gender Studies worldwide confront the double whammy of the academic field’s persistent urgency amidst heightened risk for its scholars and students. As a result, there is a pressing need for collaboration and solidarity among scholars working in Gender Studies to safeguard academic freedom for high-quality research and education and strengthen advocacy efforts in the face of growing challenges. Four Gender Studies hubs in Pakistan, Turkey, and the Netherlands have started creating and using digital spaces for knowledge creation, exchange, and mutual support.

Persistent urgency of Gender Studies to further a gender equality agenda

Rooted in feminist activism of the late 1960s, Gender Studies uniquely integrates theory, vision, and action to examine the role of gender in society and resulting inequalities and power differences. The discipline remains highly relevant. Despite global policy commitments to gender equality – from the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – gender-based violence and human rights violations as well as gender gaps in the economy and in decision-making positions persist.

In Pakistan, consistently ranked among the lowest in gender equality, the situation is dire. Gender-based violence, including abductions, (gang)rape, and domestic violence experienced by women, increased in 2023 compared to 2022. Transphobia has intensified, exemplified by the Federal Shariat Court’s declaring sections of the historic Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2018 in violation of Islamic law, even as transgender persons face ongoing violence and discrimination. State repression, including obstruction of annual Aurat [women’s] marches on International Women’s Day, further undermines efforts for gender justice.

To tap the potential of Gender Studies to counter such gender-based discriminations and gaps, the discipline’s Northern bias poses a formidable obstacle. Gender Studies curricula are still dominated by theories grounded in the global North, despite the discipline’s emphasis on intersections with local contexts and histories that produce specific forms of gendered structures and inequalities in society. For students in global South contexts like Pakistan, this creates the impression of an academic discipline that is antagonistic to students’ culture, dismissive of their lived realities and struggles, making engagement difficult. Therefore, to implement gender equality agendas effectively, indigenous gender perspectives are crucial.

Global rise of an anti-gender rights movement

This current dearth of a context-sensitive canon is aggravated by the global rise of an anti-gender rights movement, defined as “the transnational constellation of actors working to preserve the heteropatriarchal sex and gender power hierarchy in all areas of social, political, economic, and cultural life” (McEwen and Narayanaswamy 2023: 4). In recent years, misinformation about gender has been used to discredit and marginalise Gender Studies departments and scholars.

These global dynamics are reflected in our respective countries. In Turkey, discussions on anti-gender rights movements and policies have intensified amid democratic backsliding and the construction of a conservative, binary-unequal gender regime. In 2019, the Turkish Council of Higher Education removed the Position Document on Gender Equality from its website and cancelled the related “Higher Education Institutions Gender Equality Project.” This political backlash has pressured Gender Studies centres to rename themselves, e.g., as Centre for Women’s Studies or Department of Family Studies, in line with the government’s conservative stance. Consequently, gender equality and LGBTIQ+ activism and visibility among students on university campuses are suppressed, leaving Gender Studies scholars feeling marginalised and oppressed.

In Pakistan, state bodies have long expected Gender Studies to focus on patriarchal assumptions about gender relations such as home management. In 2020, a petition was filed in the Lahore High Court requesting the State of Pakistan to ban the academic discipline, arguing that it conflicts with the country’s religious and cultural values. On university campuses, transgender faculty staff involvement in Gender Studies is actively discouraged, reinforcing binary gender norms despite South Asia’s long history of gender diversity. Moreover, in both Pakistan and Turkey, gender scholars are framed, discredited and policed as promoting a Western agenda.

The Netherlands, known for its strong gender equality commitments, is not immune to the rise of anti-gender rights politics. As part of a major overhaul of the Dutch policy for development cooperation that significantly reduces support for international partners and orients it more towards Dutch interests, the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Aid recently announced to end international funding for women’s rights and gender equality, threatening to halt progress in its commitment to pursuing a feminist foreign policy.

Countering anti-gender rights backlash through transnational digital collaboration in Gender Studies

Against the backdrop of persistent gender inequalities, Northern-centric theorising of gender and backlash against Gender Studies, we have started experimenting with transnational digital collaboration between the institutions in which we are based in Pakistan, Turkey, and the Netherlands. This approach offers an effective way to address these intertwined challenges to gender equality through context-sensitive engagement.

In practice, this has involved a pilot in transnational hybrid teaching module in Gender Studies between the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam and the Centre for Excellence in Gender Studies (CEGS) at Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad as well as the establishment of an online platform that connects Gender Studies centres in different parts of Turkey by the Center for Gender Studies at TED University Ankara. Together with the Department for Gender and Development Studies at the University of Balochistan Quetta, we plan to scale these experiences.

We believe that this initiative has the potential to transfer context-sensitive Gender Studies knowledge to a broader audience while modernising higher education institutes and enhancing curricular relevance. It also fosters transnational solidarity among scholars, providing a safe space to share work, address concerns, and collaboratively navigate challenges to gender equality in academia and beyond.

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About the authors:

Karin Astrid Siegmann works as an Associate Professor of Gender and Labour Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS).

Saad Ali Khan is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Excellence in Gender Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad (CEGS) and a Visiting Fellow at the ISS.

Rabbia Aslam is an Assistant Professor at the CEGS. Her doctoral research investigated Gender Studies as an academic field in Pakistan.

Bilge Sahin works as an Assistant Professor in Conflict and Peace Studies at ISS where she incorporates gender perspectives into her teaching and research.

Alia Amirali is an Assistant Professor at the CEGS as well as a feminist organizer.

Selin Akyüz is an Associate Professor at TED University Ankara, specializing in gender studies, political masculinities, and feminist methodologies.

Aurangzaib Alizai holds the position of an Assistant Professor in the Gender and Development Studies Department at the University of Balochistan Quetta.

Tuğçe Çetinkaya is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Middle East Technical University Ankara where her doctoral research explores the gender and class dynamics of local environmental struggles.

Zuhal Yeşilyurt Gündüz is Professor and heads the Center for Gender Studies as well as the Political Science and International Relations Department at TED University in Ankara.

Muhib Kakar is an academic and researcher specialised in Gender Studies.

Amna Hafeez Mobeen is a lecturer and researcher at CEGS. She recently completed her doctoral dissertation at Pakistan’s National Institute of Pakistan Studies (NIPS).

 

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