On July 8, 9 and 10, 2024, the European Conference on Politics and Gender (ECPG) was held at Ghent University. This event brought together more than 700 researchers from all over the world. Researchers from IGOP and DEC presented various ongoing research, covering both doctoral theses and current competitive projects. Below is a brief summary of their contributions:
Eva Anduiza, researcher at DEC, and Katharina Heger (Oregon State University) organized the Panel “Measuring attitudes towards gender: Approaches across concepts, cultures and methods”. In this panel, various contributions that measure attitudes towards gender from different theoretical, conceptual and methodological perspectives were connected. There were 5 presentations among which stand out:
Paula Zuluaga, Juan de la Cierva researcher, presented an article co-authored with Eva Anduiza (UAB) and Marta Fraile (UAM), titled “Sexism as a Multidimensional Concept: An Empirical Examination of Traditional, Ambivalent, and Modern Sexism.” This article is part of the ICREA and EMPOL project, and analyzes different indicators of sexism to see if the different dimensions identified by the theory can be empirically founded and to analyze their predictors and their explanatory power.
Eva Anduiza, researcher at the DEC, presented “Feminism as a threat”, in collaboration with Gefjon Off (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg). This article, which is also part of the ICREA and EMPOL project, proposes a measurement of feminism as something threatening to analyze related attitudes and behaviors using panel data from Spain.
Margarita León and Dani Marinova, both researchers at the IGOP, organized the panel “Family policy, gender and intersecting inequalities” that focused on the European Work-Life Balance Directive approved in 2019, which seeks to improve related social policies with paid employment and care, trying to equalize care responsibilities between women and men. There were 6 presentations on the panel, among the most notable:
Pedro Manuel Bellón, predoctoral researcher at the IGOP, presented “Equal Leave, Solo Impact: When Equal, Non-transferable Paternity Leave Reduces the Motherhood Penalty in Spain”, together with Dani Marinova (UAB), as part of the FAIRLEAVE project. In this article they examine the impact of the paternity leave reform in Spain on the penalization of motherhood.
Adriana Offredi, predoctoral researcher at the IGOP, presented her first doctoral thesis article entitled “Care and Minimum Income Policies. When Welfare Conditionality meets Unpaid Care Work” which analyzes minimum income schemes (MIS) in Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. The study examines how unpaid care work is considered in minimum income conditionality criteria and how this impacts women’s ability to access these benefits.
Dani Marinova presented an article co-authored with Marga León on the impact of improving parental leave on parents’ probabilities of taking leave. This research is part of the project led by Marinova FAIRLEAVE.
Margarita León presented the results of Work Package 5 of the rEUsilience project, co-authored with Mary Daly (University of Oxford) and Ivana Dobrotic (University of Zagreb), under the title “Navigating family transitions: the revealing role of social policy in families resilience” which compares three policy fields (income protection, care and work-life balance) in six European countries: Belgium, Croatia, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The study evaluates the capacity of these welfare states to support families in situations of unexpected change.
Finally, Laura Gutiérrez, predoctoral researcher at the DEC, presented the second article of her doctoral thesis titled “Achieving the Olimpia Law: A Success of Evidence-Based Advocacy by a Women’s Movement in Mexico” in the panel “Feminist Movements and Activisms: Navigating Civil Society-State Relations”. This study analyzes the capacity of women’s movements in Mexico to influence legislative action on digital violence through evidence generation as an influence strategy.
The congress was an invaluable opportunity for the exchange of ideas and learning, highlighting the participation and high level of the research presented.
