Vol. 59 No. 2 (2025): The Rise of Anti-gender and Anti-feminist Discourses in International Politics

This special issue of Politikon: The IAPSS Journal of Political Science examines the complex interplay between rising anti-gender movements and feminist resistance strategies across diverse global contexts. Three articles analyze how these movements operate transnationally across political institutions, advocacy organizations, and digital technologies. Together, they reveal the strategic adaptability of anti-gender actors who shift between religious and secular arguments, grassroots and institutional tactics, and traditional and technological battlegrounds. Key insights reveal these movements’ remarkable adaptability, cross-border coordination, simultaneous multi-level operation, and tendency to co-opt progressive language while projecting their own authoritarian tendencies onto feminist movements. 

The cover illustration for our special issue is designed by Utsa SARMIN, a journalist, researcher, and artist based in Kolkata, India: "The illustration depicts our tired angry embattled selves having to look back, and go back to the basics—bread and roses, equality and dignity—in an increasingly polarised world where anti-women and anti-feminist narratives dangerously start resembling a world without our rights."