International Conference: Transforming Gender Orders

This conference takes up the controversies about the transformation of gender relations in the course of globalization processes and strives for a discussion from new perspectives. Drawing on the work of R. Connell gender orders refer to historically constructed patterns of power relations between men and women (not only as subjects, but also in the social arrangements of masculinity and femininity) which are mediated and institutionalized via distinctions and relations. We seek to analyze both the normative and symbolic aspects of these relations and the social and cultural codings and the spaces of action of relations between the genders and within one of the gender groups. Modernization theorists argue that hegemonic and patriarchal orders are increasingly weakening and will disappear altogether. The transnational perspective, which will be the main focus of this conference's debates, rejects the belief in a unilinear process from a patriarchal to an emancipatory order. Our starting point is that in the transnational context contradictory developments can be observed in changing gender orders. We describe the outcome of these tendencies as coexistence between re-traditionalization and de-traditionalization, together with the emergence of new regimes of justification and new semantics of legitimation. This conference investigates the transformation of gender orders in transnational space. We are concerned with social, political, economic, and cultural relations and forms of integration which traverse the borders of nation states. Nation states are not (or no longer) the most important frames of reference for gender norms and codings. Nonetheless, as a long-lasting matrix, their actions continue to have an effect on people's lives.

The conference is organized in four panels covering three main areas: care, family, and migration. These provide the background against which we pose the question of whether gender relations and orders are shifting, how they are shifting and in what direction.

For the purposes of this conference intersectionality, as a way of establishing connections between various lines of difference, functions as a cross-cutting perspective which makes an appearance in each of the issue areas to which a panel is devoted.