Under Authoritarian Eyes

Theories of transnational feminism often frame feminist knowledge as a project of Western hegemony to move ideas unilaterally from the "emancipated" West to other parts of the world. How does this framework resonate with feminists in times of authoritarianism? In Under Authoritarian Eyes, Leandra Bias revisits long-held assumptions of West-East power to understand how power relations influence feminists' lived reality in authoritarian times. She argues that the focus on transnational power relations within critical feminist scholarship has overshadowed another emerging aspect of power: the rise of authoritarianism in post-communist Europe, the gender backlash on which it thrives, and, consequently, the risk of co-optability that accompanies it. With a focus on Russia and Serbia, Bias finds that in authoritarian contexts, feminists often reject the view of transnational feminism as merely an extension of Western dominance. In fact, they argue that this view mirrors the rhetoric of their regimes, which claim feminism and "gender ideology" are Western strategies to destroy "traditional values" and undermine national sovereignty. In highlighting these dynamics, Bias centers domestic over transnational power dynamics to illustrate how arguments that were formulated with an emancipatory aim can contribute to the subjugation of feminists across different political contexts. Drawing on over seventy interviews with four generations of feminist activists and scholars in Russia and Serbia, Bias offers a nuanced perspective on feminist agency, revealing how feminists innovate resistance and subversive approaches without reinforcing authoritarian narratives. By emphasizing the importance of solidarity, shared experience, and mutual support across borders and regimes, Under Authoritarian Eyes fundamentally reshapes the discourse on transnational feminism with important implications for democracy and human rights more broadly. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Leandra Bias is a Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione Fellow at the University of Fribourg. Her research studies how gender, (de-)democratization, and political violence interact with each other. Regionally, Leandra specialises in former communist Europe. She is the recipient of the European Consortium for Political Research 2023 Joni Lovenduski PhD Prize, and her active engagement in science communication was recognised with the 2022 Young Scholar Award by the Walter Benjamin Kolleg.