The current moment is characterised by compounding and mutually reinforcing crises. It is not just that insecurities of climate change, public health emergencies, systemic inequality, and political instability via violence are present, but that they are interlocking. This condition, Polycrisis, has been used to describe the escalating complexity and convergence of global challenges. Interventions however have not yielded satisfactory resolutions. The insufficient of leadership models to resolve these crises, we find are rooted in hierarchical technocratic paradigms that are incapable of producing resolutions that undermine the structural inequalities that underpin the Polycrisis.

In this paper, we argue that feminist leadership, grounded in values of inclusivity, intersectionality, and care, offers untapped potential for navigating these overlapping challenges. Drawing on feminist institutional policy and ethics of care analysis, and systems thinking Our paper explores the possibilities of innovative and interdisciplinary interventions, positioning feminist leadership as a transformative model for systems thinking and inclusive decision-making under conditions of uncertainty.

Reflecting on recent European leadership responses to global crises, this paper in Europe with explores first the ways in which dominant responses are often underpinned by reactionary patriarchal politics whether it is with respect to violence as we see in Ukraine and Gaza or to planetary crisis as in the case of climate change. In highlighting the limitation of conventional leadership, the paper will explore the entry points for feminist approaches building on recent moves to include feminism in global policymaking.

Directive (EU) 2024/1385 on combating violence against women and domestic violence marks a significant step forward in how the European Union addresses gender-based violence, aiming to improve prevention, protection, and support for victims across all Member States. However, the Directive does not introduce a harmonized definition of rape centered on sexual consent. This choice highlights a broader issue in European criminal law: the difficulty of defining—and therefore punishing—forms of violence, such as gender-based violence, that are deeply embedded within each Member State’s social, cultural, and legal traditions. The challenges of defining rape raise fundamental questions about, among others, the construction of legal categories, the recognition of harm, and the capacity of criminal law to translate complex interpersonal dynamics into punishable conduct. These questions become particularly relevant within the EU context, where harmonization efforts must contend with divergent national understandings of sexuality, coercion, autonomy, and responsibility.

Against this background, the paper examines the conceptual and methodological challenges faced by criminal law scholars and legislators when addressing gender-based violence (of which sexual violence is the most pervasive form) within a multi-level legal system. By analyzing Directive 2024/1385 and comparing selected national criminal law frameworks, the paper explores the role of cultural, social, and historical factors in articulating the boundaries of criminal responsibility in cases of sexual violence.

Ultimately, the paper situates these issues within broader debates on the scope and limits of European criminal law, highlighting the specific challenges that arise when the EU seeks to intervene in areas closely linked to moral sensibilities and social norms.

Human rights are often assumed to follow a linear trajectory of consolidation, progressive institutionalisation, constitutionalisation, and judicial protection. Recent constitutional developments, however, have challenged this assumption, showing that certain categories of human rights have been subject to reinterpretation, contestation, and reversal within domestic constitutional systems. Among these, gendered human rights occupy a particularly vulnerable position because their interpretation intersects with ideological narratives about reproduction, morality, and national identity. This project examines the contemporary transformation of human rights protections against this backdrop, analysing how constitutional law reflects these shifting trajectories.

By focusing on gendered human rights as a site where the broader evolution of human rights becomes constitutionally visible, this article investigates reproductive justice and bodily autonomy as sensitive domains of constitutional interpretation, adjudication, and rights allocation. This comparative analysis of the evolution of these rights in France, Spain, Italy, Poland, and Hungary will examine divergent trajectories of human rights, from expansion to stabilisation to contraction.

This article further argues that digitalised ‘traditional values’ and anti-gender narratives are not confined to political mobilisation but are increasingly informing constitutional argumentation. They are also influencing the justificatory vocabulary through which rights are interpreted, balanced, and limited in constitutional courts. This feminist-informed research examines how constitutional law mediates human rights change across selected EU Member States, with a focus on the impact of digital narratives on amendments and adjudication.

This chapter analyses the position of LGBT+ rights in the Czech Republic as a key indicator of post-socialist democratic development, civic participation, and ideological contestation. Covering the period from the 1990s to the mid-2020s, it situates contemporary legal and social debates within a broader historical and political trajectory of LGBT+ activism, institutional reform, and public discourse. Rather than approaching LGBT+ rights solely through a legal lens, the chapter examines their enforcement, contestation, and societal reception as part of a wider struggle over democratic values, national identity, and the boundaries of citizenship.

In comparative perspective, the Czech Republic occupies an ambivalent position within Central and Eastern Europe. While often regarded as a relative exception in the Visegrad region—characterised by higher levels of public acceptance and a more developed civil society than countries such as Hungary or Poland—it continues to face significant structural barriers to full equality, most notably the absence of marriage equality and persistent political reluctance to prioritise LGBT+ issues. Parliamentary debates reveal deep ideological divisions, with conflicts over tradition, family, and sovereignty intersecting with critiques of Europeanisation and human rights norms.

The chapter further traces the transformation of Czech LGBT+ activism after 2006, highlighting generational change, the professionalisation of NGO advocacy, and the parallel rise of grassroots and regional initiatives that challenge Prague-centric and corporatised models of activism. By analysing legislative developments alongside forms of civic mobilisation, the chapter assesses how LGBT+ rights shape the Czech Republic’s domestic democratic legitimacy and its international image. It concludes that the Czech case defies simple evaluation: progress and resistance coexist, rendering the state of LGBT+ rights neither unequivocally successful nor wholly deficient, but emblematic of a democracy in ongoing negotiation.