Public lecture: Theorizing Illiberal State Feminism

Title Theorizing Illiberal State Feminism: Institutional Dilemmas and Political Parallelism in China’s Gender Governance.

Abatract Institutionally speaking, state feminism is manifested by a strong women's policy agency (WPA) that facilitates bargaining between women's movements and state bureaucracies. It remains underexplored, however, when state feminism thrives or deteriorates under authoritarianism and what institutional factors account for this. Using China's contemporary gender politics as a case study, this article aims to develop a more nuanced understanding of illiberal state feminism theory and its internal workings. It contends that deep-rooted institutional dilemmas lie at the heart of an illiberal state feminism such as China's, which are expressed in four pairs of contradictions: 1) interest consolidation vs misrepresentation, 2) coalition-building vs repression 3) institutionalization vs bureaucratization, and 4) political integration vs parallelism. These internal contradictions lead to the inevitable segregation and marginalization of illiberal state feminism. This article contributes to the current scholarship on state feminism by dissecting the unintended institutional obstacles faced by a single dominant WPA sponsored by an illiberal state.

Bio Dr Yunyun Zhou is a political sociologist with expertise in gender and authoritarianism, representation, political institution, nationalism, and the politics of affects. She holds a master’s degree in Political Sociology and a PhD in Global and Area Studies from the University of Oxford. After holding academic positions at Sciences Po and the University of Oslo, she joined the Department of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London in 2024. Her past research has gained international recognition in the academic fields of politics and gender and offered critical insights into topics such as gender lobbying and legislation, substantive political representation, institutional change, state feminism, and authoritarianism, particularly in East Asia. Her work has been published in leading academic journals, including Politics & Gender, Women’s Studies International Forum, Communication, Culture & Critique, and Journal of Contemporary China.