This report distils six years of collaborative research (from late 2019 to early 2026) by the Institute of Development Studies and 11 partners across seven countries on how contemporary gender backlash operates, and how feminist, queer, and other social movements are resisting it. It argues that current backlash is not simply anti-feminist business as usual but a qualitatively different, globally proliferating mode of patriarchal crisis management, emerging amid intersecting crises, authoritarianism, and deepening inequalities.
The report conceptualises gender backlash as a multidimensional attack on gender equality, its institutions, and those advancing gender justice, driven by overlapping reactive, pre‑emptive, proactive, and opportunistic actors including religious fundamentalists, ethnonationalist projects, conservative civil society, digital manosphere communities, and authoritarian-leaning states.