Round Table – “Resisting the Backlash: Supporting Feminist Strategies Against Anti-Gender Movements in France and Europe”

Across Europe, reactionary forces are gaining ground: anti-gender movements, far-right parties, anti-feminist and LGBTQIA+ hostile policies. The conservative backlash is increasingly organised, funded, and deployed transnationally. While France has recently strengthened certain rights — such as enshrining abortion in the Constitution — it is not immune to this offensive. Anti-gender campaigns led by far-right groups, influential media figures, and conservative think tanks target sexuality education, trans rights, feminist and LGBTQIA+ organisations, and the so-called “woke agenda.”

In Europe, attacks are often even more direct. In Hungary, a constitutional amendment passed in April 2025 now bans LGBTQ+ gatherings and enshrines a binary definition of gender, effectively excluding trans and intersex people from legal recognition. In Italy, the Meloni government is erasing LGBTQ+ parents from birth certificates. In the UK, the Supreme Court ruled on April 16 that “biological sex” — not gender — defines a woman in the eyes of the law, a decision that could have immediate and harmful consequences for trans women. These coordinated continent-wide attacks aim to silence dissenting voices and reinforce a patriarchal, heteronormative, and authoritarian order.

It is in this context that the FIERCE project (Feminist movements and Institutions against anti-gender Backlash in Europe) was created — a research programme funded by the European Commission that, for the past three years, has studied the interactions between feminist movements and anti-gender mobilisations in eight European countries (France, Slovenia, Turkey, Greece, Denmark, Italy, Spain, and Poland).

In France, the feminist organisations involved in FIERCE chose to conclude this research cycle with a strong political gesture: the organisation of the Margins: On Fire! Festival, a radical, joyful, and strategic space for transnational feminist convergence.

This roundtable, designed as one of the key moments of the festival, will present the main findings of the FIERCE project on feminist movements over the past ten years, and on the strategies of anti-gender movements. It will also serve as a space for discussion with activists and practitioners engaged in feminist, social, and democratic struggles.

Resisting the backlash means defending a democracy that is inclusive, vibrant, grassroots, and feminist.

Location: L’Académie du Climat, Paris

Date & Time: Friday, June 6 | 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Language(s): English & French

Participants: Albane Gaillot, Paul Blokker, Rozenn LeCarboulec, Paula-Charlotte Matlach, Jeanne Hefez, Emma Rafowicz