Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Brussels Office

What role for democracy in progressive mobilisation in Europe today?

Event report on the launch of our new volume «The Crisis and Future of Democracy»

The Crisis and Future of Democracy

In 14 chapters, this book tackles a wide range of problems surrounding democracy and how it might evolve, often drawing the reader’s attention to less-discussed matters

A Caring State?

Welfare State Retrenchment, the Effects on Women, and Feminist Responses in Sweden

Take up space!

We need mobility for all instead of car-centrism and hegemonic masculinity

Together and Rebellious

Exploring Territories of Feminist Economics

“When women spend more time at home, it is never good for their rights”

The lockdown has highlighted the fact that victims of domestic violence live in de facto lockdown all the time. Anne-Cécile Mailfert is a French feminist activist and President of the Fondation des Femmes (Women's Foundation). In early June 2020, she took the time to answer questions from A Season in Hell Editor Ethan Earle about violence against women during, before and after the Coronavirus.

Call for Tenders: Report/Study on “The effects of the dismantling of the Swedish welfare state on women”

The romanticisation of the Swedish welfare system and its positive effects on gender equality persists, notwithstanding the substantial dismantling of the welfare state in recent decades and Sweden’s drop in gender equality rankings. Unlike elsewhere in Europe, this development reflects an impact not so much of the last economic crisis when the government did not pursue the politics of austerity seen across much of the continent ...

Global Working Group Beyond Development

About the Global Working Group The Global Working Group Beyond Development is hosted by the Brussels Office of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung since 2016. It includes around thirty engaged researchers, activists and popular educators from all five continents which bring together knowledge and experience ...

Climate Justice and Gender Justice

The fight for climate justice must be feminist, anti-racist and anti-capitalist What does a feminist perspective mean? Feminism is constituted by a wide range of political movements, ideologies, and social movements across the globe that share the common goal to define, establish, and achieve the political, economic, social and personal equality of the sexes ...

Impact of Austerity Measures on Women in Croatia

When we first started to look at various data, we found that both men and women in Croatia suffered grave consequences of the recent economic crisis. Only when we turned our eye to the devastation that happened during the 1990s and in the early 2000s did it became possible to see the different effects of cuts to social services and privatisation processes on women as a group ...

Feminist Responses to Austerity

Our interviewees talk about how austerity has gendered effects in their respective countries and how those effects articulate in very similar ways despite of different economic and social contexts. The interviewees refer repeatedly to the case studies they have written. Those studies have been published recently on our website and are available for download on this page: When the Belt Can't Get Any Tighter Videos Pauline Cullen (Ireland), duration 5,27 min ...

"Should Women Have More Rights?" - Traditional Values and Austerity in Russia

Russia has been experiencing the results of an acute economic crisis since 2012. However, the government has not been explicit in its declarations regarding austerity policies. On the contrary, it tends to represent its measures as "normal" and generally justifies cuts to public expenditure and reduced spending as part of a new understanding of the welfare state and socio-economic relations ...

Devaluation of Female Labor and the Retreat of the State

Following the Euromaidan, the outbreak of war and ensuing economic crisis, the Ukrainian government introduced wide-ranging reforms guided by the neoliberal idea that stability and economic growth can be generated by cutting social spending. Despite the government's proclaimed intent to support the poorest and weakest members of Ukrainian society, the opposite has occurred, and the negative effects of the new reforms have ended up targeting them most ...

Irish Feminist Approaches against Austerity Regimes

We find austerity is gendered and that, following almost a decade of austerity, the position of women in Ireland has regressed economically and socially. Different dynamics shape gendered austerity which in some instances re-feminises care, while in other instances forces a process of de-domestication for some women ...

The Permanent Care Crisis and Its Effects on Gender Equality

The international financial crisis that began in 2007 hit the Spanish economy hard, accelerating the housing market's collapse and increasing unemployment (which rose from 9.6% in 2008 to 26.9% in 2013) and the risk of poverty. The European Union intensified its pressure on Spain in spring 2010, as Zapatero's government approved the first package of austerity measures in May of that year, along with labour market and pension reforms later on ...

When the Belt Can't Get Any Tighter

"Without us, the world stops working" – This was the slogan under which millions of Spanish women launched a general strike on 8 March 2018. The strike was more than just a strike, however, giving women the opportunity to discuss different related topics and engage in processes of self-organization around questions like work, care, and consumption (read more about the strike) ...

Gendered Aspects of the Austerity Regime in Greece: 2010–2017

Though austerity has prevailed across Europe to varying degrees, Greece in particular faces a situation of permanent austerity. The fiscal consolidation programs implemented since 2010 have brought extensive cuts to the public sector, over-taxation, privatizations, institutional reforms, devaluation of labour, high unemployment and precariousness ...

Feminist Responses to Austerity in Europe

Women are hit twice by austerity – as workers in sectors double affected by structural reforms and as social security recipients. This is demonstrated by case studies from ten European countries commissioned by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung in 2017. Despite recent growth accelerations, the European economies do not live up to their promise of ending austerity ...

"Without women the world would stop."

Millions second the feminist strike in Spain: and now what? 13 March 2018: It is almost impossible not to hold your breath when you see the images of the streets of Spain full of women and men on 8 March 2018. The newspapers and TV chains at global level have these images in their openings and front pages ...

Transforming our lives. Transforming the world.

The Third International Marxist-Feminist Conference will take place at Lund University (Lund, Sweden), October 6-7, 2018. The format of the Conference In March 2015 over 500 scholars and activists participated in the first international Marxist-Feminist conference in Berlin exploring topics such as neoliberalism, intersectionality and social reproduction ...

Tag: feminism