Austerity Politics and Feminist Struggles in Spain: Reconfiguring the Gender Regime?

Abstract

Austerity politics that the EU and the Spanish government have enacted from 2010 onwards in response to the economic crisis is changing the Spanish gender regime in more neoliberal and conservative directions. However, feminist and civil society’s struggles against austerity and anti-equality policies, women’s resistance to ‘go back home’, and new local governments emerging from civic platforms have offered political opportunities for resisting the changes in the gender regime, preventing so far the redomestication of women. Deregulatory employment policies, budget cuts in gender equality policies, and restructuring of the equality machinery, together with feminist and civil society’s anti-austerity struggles, indicate that the Spanish gender regime is still public, though more neoliberal.