Gender, Law, Backlash.

Location: University of Haifa, Israel

Dates: June 7-8, 2026

Free participation and attendance

Submission of abstracts: February 16, 2026

Responses: March 19, 2026

In recent years, liberal democracies across the globe are facing intensifying waves of authoritarian, conservative or anti-democratic mobilizations, often challenging fundamental legal protections and democratic norms. Within this context, anti-feminist and anti-gender movements have gained significant momentum, threatening hard-won advances in women's rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, and gender equality through legislative rollbacks, policy restrictions, and social backlash.

In this conference we seek to understand how law functions as both a tool and a target in contemporary gender struggles—how it is weaponized to restrict rights, mobilized to defend them, and contested in courts, legislatures, and public spheres.

We invite scholars, activists, legal practitioners, and community organizers to engage critically with these developments through interdisciplinary and intersectional perspectives. We welcome contributions examining the legal frameworks, regulatory mechanisms, policy instruments, and judicial processes shaping gender and sexuality rights, as well as the grassroots and strategies developed in response to anti-gender mobilization.

We seek proposals from all disciplines, including but not limited to law, political science, sociology, gender studies, anthropology, philosophy, history, psychology, economics, religious studies, education, cultural representations (arts, literature, film, media etc.). Early-career researchers and non-academic practitioners are warmly encouraged to apply. All papers should engage with legal dimensions.