Tag Archives: gender

August 6, 2018

Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Researchers on the Campaign Against a Project on Gender Equality

by lefteast  

Note from the LeftEast editors: days after The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (a.k.a. The Istanbul Convention) was declared “unconstitutional” by the Bulgarian Constitutional Court, the witch-hunt against the so-called “gender ideology” took its first symbolic victim. A project on gender equality nominated in the first phase of UNESCO’s Participation Programme 2018-2019 was blocked by the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, and later by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science (despite the fact that the Ministry had ..

August 2, 2018

It was never about the Istanbul Convention

by Stanislav Dodov  

The debate over the ratification of the so called “Istanbul Convention” in Bulgaria, as in some other countries in the region, became a huge public scandal and probably the most important political matter of 2018. Originally intended to provide states with a framework for prevention and reduction of domestic violence against women, the document has become a byword for a conspiracy against the Bulgarian people and their supposed “traditional values” violated by foreign liberal powers through the use of “gender ideology”. On the 27th of July the Constitutional Court, referred to the matter by 75 deputie ..

February 23, 2017

[FeminEasts] Queer Podcasting from Around the Blocs: Call for Contributions

by FeminEasts  

[FeminEasts] Detailed Call More, decolonizing and public meetings should exist for and about the feminisms of the globe’s “imagined easts”. As part of an attempt to create one such type of “meeting place”, we envision a series of 4 podcasts to be released regularly over the next year. For this planned LeftEast series, adequately-titled (you will agree) “FeminEasts”, we invite contributions of short audio and text materials from feminist contributors wherever. Podcast lovers and amateur sound recorders are welcome; we can provide minimal technical info and tips. The broad intention of this stories-an ..

February 23, 2017

Call for Contributors: FeminEasts

by FeminEasts  

Feminism is transnational. Yet the common ground between different activist scenes is more an assumption than a concrete reality. A discussion that began in the fall of 2016 on the Facebook page Working Group on Post-socialist Neoliberalism and Social Movements noted the absence of a shared decolonial public space for left feminists. We don’t talk often enough among Bulgaria, Ghana, Ireland, Turkey, Lebanon and South Korea, neither about current developments, nor about common themes that emerge from the twisted (in the good and bad sense) political practices of global feminism. Whereas we can gather around ..

March 3, 2016

A Lesson in Self-Immolation (Film Review)

by Mariya Ivancheva  

Note from the LeftEast editors: a Bulgarian version of this text first appeared on the pages of Kultura weekly newspaper. Christina Grozeva and Peter Valchanov’s The Lesson (2014) is probably the first feature film that explains the Bulgarian winter of discontent in 2013. It tells the story of a “normal” week in the life Nadezhda (Margarita Gosheva), a Bulgarian school teacher from a small town. While she tries to punish one of her students who committed theft in a morally instructive way, life teaches the instructor a much more serious moral lesson. The Lesson is based on a true story from 2010, sensation ..

July 10, 2015

What does a victim look like? An interview with Šelja Kamerić on the legacy of ‘Bosnian Girl’

by admin  

Originally appeared on Balkanist. Šejla Kamerić discusses the status of art and women in the Balkans as well as her controversial piece “Bosnian Girl.” Inspired by the graffiti printed on the walls of the army barracks of Potočari, the piece takes on a renewed significance as the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre approaches.   If you type the words “Bosnian Girl” into Google Image Search, one result will stand apart from the rest.  This image, the best-known work of Bosnian artist Šejla Kamerić, shows a woman staring defiantly at the camera in stark black and white. The text overlaid on ..

April 29, 2015

Ankica Cakardic: UN as an intersectional polygon without class perspective

by admin  

Source: Rosa Luxembourg Stiftung This years’ CSW (59th in a row) was represented by revisiting and celebrating The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) what without any doubt influenced the framing of the whole conference in the context of «20 years after the Beijing.» Just to remind ourselves quickly the Beijing Declaration was the «can do» result of advocates for women’s rights from around the world who came together to network and lobby «to develop a framework of comprehensive commitments promising to change the lives of women and girls everywhere», as it is underlined in the UN’s Int ..

March 13, 2015

International Women’s Day in the Balkans: Ankica Čakardić

by admin  

Ankica Čakardić is an assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy, University of Zagreb. She coordinates educational programmes at the Centre for Women’s Studies in Zagreb, is a member of The Organisation for Workers Initiative and Democratisation, Croatia, Women’s Front for Labour and Social Rights and the Feminist-Marxist reading group FemFront. “Unfortunately we can really only speak of a decline in the situation of women. During the 1990s the ground was prepared for the further accumulation of capital and privatisation of common/public goods. The attack on the public sector has brought ..

March 13, 2015

International Women’s Day in the Balkans: Anita Tolić

by admin  

Anita Tolić is a member of the Initiative for Democratic Socialism and Institute for Labour Studies in Slovenia. “In the relative absence of an organized, progressive feminist struggle, the economic and social circumstances, which generate re-traditionalisation, re-patriarchalisation and re-domestification of women, threaten to cause even further regression of the historical achievements for which women (and men) have struggled.” What does the 8th of March mean in Slovenia? How is it celebrated today, and how do you think its meaning/celebration has changed in recent years, and especially in comparis ..

March 13, 2015

International Women’s Day in the Balkans: Eirini Gaitanou

by admin  

Eirini Gaitanou, is a PhD student at King’s College London, studying social movements amid the crisis in Greece. She has been active in the social movements in Greece for over a decade and has participated in both practical and theoretical debates during this time. She is a member of the anti-capitalist coalition ANTARSYA, on whose ticket she stood as a parliamentary candidate in the recent elections. “The reality brought about by the crisis affects women to the fullest extent. The collapse of social protection and the closure of social services (childcare and nurseries, health units, refuge shelters for ..