Baltic Parable of Life and Death: Christian Opinions on Gendered Violence in the Context of the Istanbul Convention1

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the reception of the so-called Istanbul Convention (IC) and attempts to answer the following questions: (1) What religious or non-religious opinions on the IC are expressed in Baltic (secular and religious) media discourses? and (2) How do religious women in Baltic countries talk about the IC and violence against women in the context of it (what opinions are expressed, how they are argued, and what language and rhetoric are used)? This study uses two empirical research methods: discourse analysis for secular and religious news media about the IC and semi-structured interviews with religious women from the three Baltic countries. In Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, religious women are not well-informed about the IC, and when asked about it, they attempt to guess at what their church leaders might think. This chapter also shows how the ideology of the international anti-genderism movement is receiving eager support from religious-nationalist circles in the Baltics; as a result, churches largely maintain silence or divert the attention from violence against women to general violence.