Will study the fight to protect women’s rights in contexts of backlash 

Around the world, feminist activists are facing significant threats to the empowerment gains they struggled to achieve. Wallenberg Academy Fellow Julia Zulver will study how they mobilize in post-conflict and complex security environments to protect women’s rights.

War destroys communities, yet in its aftermath, there are unique opportunities for feminist mobilizing and women’s political and economic gains. Research shows, however, that these gains may be short-lived, in part due to patriarchal backlash. From Rwanda to El Salvador, Colombia to Myanmar, governments and their allies are attacking feminists and aiming to roll back the rights they promote.

Yet despite overt and subtle threats and attacks, women and feminists continue to promote gender justice and to defend their empowerment gains. Dr Julia Zulver, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Oxford University, will study the organisations that mobilize to protect feminist progress in Colombia, El Salvador, and Mexico. 

Her project has three objectives. First, she will map the tactics state actors and their allies use against women’s and feminist organisations. Second, she will document how these organisations adapt their own strategies to overcome the political, legal, and cultural barriers they face, so they can continue to promote women’s rights. Finally, she will explore what these organisations’ work means for the quality of democracy more broadly. 

Dr. Zulver will focus on the policy implications of her findings for the Women, Peace and Security Agenda, a global framework that the UN Security Council adopted in 2000, in part to promote the role of women in post-conflict reconstruction.

As a Wallenberg Academy Fellow, Julia Zulver will work with the Gender, Peace & Security research team at the Swedish Defence University.