1 - What's Gender Got to Do With It?: The Gender Dimension of Globalization and Anti-Gender Politics in East Asia

The anti-gender campaigns which emerged around 2010 in Europe, including the ban of gender studies in Hungary, the constant targeting of gender studies as a “pseudo-science” in Germany and the anti-equal marriage activists who claim that “gender ideology” is destroying the nuclear family in France. However, this is not only an European phenomena, as we have seen anti-gender campaigns taking place in Latin America and East Asia, including the demonstrations related to the conservative movement “Con mis Hijos no te Metas” in Lima that protested against gender ideology, the attack of the feminist scholar, Judith Butler, in Brazil, the backlash against the “#Me Too” movement in South Korea and the anti-feminist movement in Japan. This paper argues that these campaigns are not simply a continuation of anti-feminist movements in the past, but part of a new political dimension, as opposition to "gender" has become a key element to the rise of right-wing populism, which encompasses the anxiety and anger caused by neoliberalism and globalization.

This paper will look at the anti-gender campaigns in both South Korea and Japan, the opportunistic synergy between the conservative (and ultra-conservative) anti-gender movement and right-wing populist parties, and lastly, explore how the anti-gender rhetoric in these respective countries can be best understood as a reactionary to neoliberalism and globalization.