Major political and social shifts are resulting in new forces and alliances that are visibly pushing back, stifling the possibilities of equal women’s rights and gender justice.

Gender justice
is under attack.

How can we counter
backlash together?

What is needed for women’s rights organisations and gender justice defenders to counter backlash and the subtle erosion of gender transformative discourse, policy, and practice?

A five year global research programme to
Share diverse experience and knowledge
Build new knowledge of these complex phenomena
Identify strategies to counter backlash
Engaged research and capacity building across networks and strategic partnerships.
Partner countries
Brazil.Bangladesh.
India.Kenya.Lebanon.
Turkey.Uganda.
Short-term research countries
India.Pakistan.
Serbia.Turkey.

What's Happening?


Gender justice is increasingly contested the world over. Yet, equity across the genders is a critical foundation of human rights and sustainable development.

Backlash wages against the possibilities of transformative gender justice. To counter it, we must understand its diverse manifestations - from the subtle to the spectacular, the hidden to the explicit.

Solidarity, collaboration, and co-creation are the greatest tools in the box to mutually resist and counter coordinated and global attacks on gender and social justice.
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Countering Backlash Working Paper
Countering Backlash: Reclaiming Gender Justice in Uganda
Josephine Ahikire, Amon Ashaba Mwiine

This report engages with the following questions that have been explored over a period of four years: What is backlash? What is the origin, nature and motive of gender backlash? What drives gender backlash? […]

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Voice, Research, Uganda
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Countering Backlash Working Paper
Analysis of Voice and Agency in Countering Backlash Against Gender Justice: Synthesis of Three Policy Cases in Bangladesh
Maheen Sultan, Mohaiminul Islam, Pragyna Mahpara, Iffat Jahan Antara, Shamsad Navia Novelly

This paper consolidates research conducted in Bangladesh on three policy cases to understand how gender justice movements formulate their demands on specific issues in response to the backlash they encounter from anti-rights actors. […]

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Voice, Research, Bangladesh
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Countering Backlash Working Paper
Backlash and Beyond: Anti-LGBTQ Lawmaking and Existential Panic in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda
Melanie Judge

This paper is based on a discourse analysis of select anti-LGBTQ laws, draft laws and related parliamentary proceedings in 2023 in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda, and reveals how efforts at expanded criminalisation seek to further regulate, police and constrain sex, sexuality, gender, family, and African subjectivities and nationhood. […]

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Policy, Research, Kenya, Uganda

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