Abstract: Internationally, we are seeing a clear rollback of women’s rights as a process of norm contestation of the liberal international order. United Nations reports reveal these rights are in retreat coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995). This regression is the result of a transnational culture war driven by a patriarchal conservative network that unites the Western radical right with autocratic powers and sectors of the Global South.
Women’s rights are a barometer of the liberal political order both internationally and domestically (democratic backsliding). Contestation on the part of the anti-gender movement of rights agreed on over the course of recent decades – like reproductive rights – also triggers dynamics of resistance. Issue 142 of Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals looks at cases of both contestation and resistance on different levels (global, regional, domestic) and in different regions (Europe, Latin America, the Middle East).