In the past decade, diplomacy and international politics have become the site of both illiberal anti-gender mobilization and proliferation of pro-gender equality norms. While feminist scholarship has extensively theorized feminist and pro-gender foreign policies, far less attention has been given to the growing influence of anti-gender actors and discourses on foreign policy agendas. In today’s rapidly changing world, anti-gender trends are not merely reactive but increasingly shape radical foreign policy shifts, contributing to the global escalation of war, militarization, authoritarianism, and anti-rights politics, as well as to sustained efforts to undermine the multilateral system. The war of aggression against Ukraine, that Russia claims to wage to protect the ‘Russian world’ from ‘gender ideologies’, offers a stark illustration. Exploring the rise of anti-gender mobilization as a force in foreign policy, that has emerged in parallel with pro-gender foreign policies, has thus become increasingly salient.

This roundtable aims to enhance our understanding of gender contestations in times of war in Europe, their role in geopolitical tensions and their global consequences. Drawing on interdisciplinary feminist approaches at the intersection of Sociology, Foreign Policy Analysis, Feminist Security Studies, and Area Studies, the roundtable brings together emerging and established scholars to examine a range of empirical cases including from epistemically overlooked Central and Eastern Europe. These include the influence of far-right on reversal of Germany’s feminist foreign policy, Czech foreign policy between feminist norms and masculinised politics, Ukraine’s strategic mobilization of gender norms under the conditions of war, Russia’s weaponization of gender and “traditional values” through foreign interference, and the role of anti-gender actors such as “strongman” leaders in destruction of international order.

The European Union has long portrayed itself as a global actor committed to advancing gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in its external action. In recent years, however, EU external positions on gender have become increasingly uneven, diluted, and at times internally contradictory. This paper asks how internal contestation within EU institutions and among member states affects the formulation and coherence of the EU’s external positions on gender rights and SRHR. It argues that illiberal contestation inside the EU has become a key driver of fragmentation and inconsistency in external gender policy outcomes.

The paper advances a theoretical framework that brings feminist institutionalism into conversation with scholarship on politicisation, differentiated integration, and EU actorness. Feminist institutionalism highlights how gendered power relations, informal rules, and institutional resistance shape policy processes, particularly where equality norms are politically contested. Building on this perspective, the paper conceptualises EU external gender policy as the product of ongoing institutional bargaining rather than as a stable or consensual policy domain. These dynamics are further intensified by politicisation and decision making under unanimity, which encourage lowest common denominator outcomes and strategic ambiguity.

Empirically, the paper employs qualitative process tracing combined with structured, focused comparison across three policy moments. It examines the negotiation and adoption of the EU Gender Action Plan III for the period 2021 to 2025, successive Council Conclusions on gender equality and Women, Peace and Security, and EU external positions on SRHR in multilateral negotiations, particularly where mandates are negotiated under unanimity, and internal disagreement directly affects external positioning.

The analysis draws on EU policy documents, draft negotiating mandates and bracketed texts, available summaries from Council Working Parties, and elite interviews with officials from the European Commission, the European External Action Service, Permanent Representations, and the European Parliament, alongside internal guidance notes and non-papers where accessible. Limited elite-level discourse analysis traces how contested concepts such as SRHR and intersectionality are reframed during negotiations.

The paper shows how internal contestation within the EU produces delays, linguistic dilution, and selective silences in external gender policy. Rather than reflecting solely on implementation failure, these patterns point to institutionalised resistance that undermines the coherence and consistency of the EU’s external action on gender rights.

This article analyzes the role of gender equality policies in post conflict Kosovo and how they are used as Europeanization tools to increase women’s formal inclusion and representation, but have failed to influence in increasing their political power. Since the end of 1999 war, gender equality and the rights of women have become a central component of Kosovo’s legal and institutional framework, led largely by international and EU state-building processes, becoming strategic instruments for EU integration process rather than only legal commitments.

Based on the feminist institutionalist and critical Europeanization scholarship this article analyzes the impact of EU in promoting gender norms, while remaining constrained by institutional practices which hinder women’s political empowerment. As a result, Kosovo has adopted gender quotas for elected bodies and legal frameworks on gender equality, which have contributed however in women’s descriptive representation, nevertheless, gendered hierarchies, exclusion and limited political influence continues to be highly present in political environment.

This article therefore analyzes the empirical evidence on the design, implementation and political impact of gender quotas and gender equality legislation in the post-war Kosovo. In particular, it analyzes how political parties have complied with the EU gender equality standards, however continued to maintain male-dominated leadership structures, while women politicians continue to be marginalized in meaningful decision-making processes. This article conceptualizes this shift as the process from exclusion to inclusion without power.

Further this article analyzes the contradiction between EU-driven gender equality and the real political experiences of women. While legal framework on gender equality remains an essential resource for women politicians, the implementation remains weak. Thus women politicians need to use the European norms on gender quality to claim legitimacy, challenge institutional exclusion, while they continue to face resistance rooted in patriarchal norms, present in institutional settings.

Building the debate on gender equality in the post conflict Kosovo as a Europeanization tool rather than a linear process, this article contributes in the debate how EU driven gender equality reforms can produce both meaningful and symbolic compliances. Broadly, this article argues that contexts such the one of post-conflict Kosovo are important to understand how Europe’s norms are negotiated, promoted, and adapted beyond the EU borders.

Anti-gender mobilization has increasingly shaken the European Union’s (EU) normative foundation in both domestic and foreign policy. Existing research on gender and foreign policy focuses primarily on EU core states and pro-gender and feminist foreign policies, leaving the EU semi-periphery and the gendering effects of Europeanisation on foreign policy underexplored. This paper addresses this gap by analysing the gendering of Czech foreign policy in times of normative polarization and weaponisation of gender in support of authoritarian governance, war and militarisation. We examine how pro-gender policies are formulated, contested, and sustained within an increasingly masculinised and anti-gender political environment. We demonstrate that the gains of top-down Europeanisation have been largely exhausted with technocratic gender policies now facing growing politicisation, polarisation, and securitisation by populist and radical right actors. Theoretically, we combine feminist foreign policy analysis with post-socialist feminist theorising to capture how semi-peripheral positioning and socio-historical legacies in Central Europe shape gender norms in foreign policy. Empirically, the study builds on policy analysis, in-depth research interviews and focus groups with femocrats, diplomats and civil society. We specifically draw on case studies of Czechia’s military and non-military support to Ukraine including responses to the war’s gendered impacts through development and humanitarian policy.