Theme Panel: Going Global with State Feminism: GEMs as Critical Actors in Crisis Times

August 8, 2025 APSA Annual Meeting, Theme Panels Comments Off on Theme Panel: Going Global with State Feminism: GEMs as Critical Actors in Crisis Times

In-Person Full Paper Panel

Participants:

  • (Chair) Amy G. Mazur, Washington State University
  • (Discussant) Nermin Allam, Rutgers University
  • (Discussant) S. Laurel Weldon, Simon Fraser University

Session Description:

In these challenging times for gender justice, democracy, and peace, Gender Equality Machineries (GEMs) – the state-based structures that promote the rights, status, and condition of women in their full complexity and seek to strike down gender-based inequities – play an important role in preventing the reversal of women’s rights and gender justice. This panel endeavors to “go global” with the scholarship on GEMs and state feminism, which has primarily only focused on the Global North, by bringing together research on Mexico, Brazil, Jordan, South Africa, and Iran. The collection of papers speaks directly to the conference’s theme by analyzing how GEMs support the pursuit of gender equality in contexts where political institutions, bureaucracies, and civil society are threatened by authoritarianism, conflict, and democratic decline.

As “critical actors” in promoting gender equality policy, GEMs have the potential to compel governments to keep gender equality a top priority, to deepen democracy and democratic practices, and are a major vector for gender mainstreaming. GEMs also partner with women’s civil society organizations to support marginalized groups and communities to better achieve their complex policy goals through “state feminism.” However, research on GEMs and state feminism has predominantly focused on Global North countries. While GEMs exist and operate in all of the world’s regions, questions remain about how these institutions operate in political contexts where democracy is fragile or autocracy remains in place, whether and how they create opportunities for gender justice in authoritarian contexts, and how these state-based institutions interact with autonomous women’s movements in a diverse range of political, cultural and socioeconomic contexts found in the countries of the Global South. This panel endeavors to answer some of these pressing questions.