The Violent Implications of Opposition to the Istanbul Convention^†

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This artcile offers an in-depth analysis of the opposition to the Istanbul Convention, employing a mixed qualitative research method that combines process tracing with critical frame analysis.

Suggestions: Expanding on the section regarding the implications of these oppositional campaigns, particularly in terms of policy development and implementation, would be valuable. Offering concrete recommendations for policymakers, activists, and international organizations could enhance the paper’s practical relevance and impact. The article could also make more extensive use of the literature, which is currently quite poor.

Author Response

Dear reviewer, we thank you for reading our manuscript carefully and for your useful suggestions on how to further strengthen the paper. In response to this we added more literature and sources. We agree that suggestions to civil society actors and policy makers could enhance the practical relevance of the paper, but this is really beyond the scope of what we offer here. We earlier published some texts for policy makers but have chosen not to do this here as we consider the public to be mainly academic peers. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article deals with an important issue such as the campaigns carried out against the Istanbul Convention and the effects this has had on women and on how gender is addressed in general.

However, the article has some elements that could be improved for a better understanding by the readers:

·      There are some unquoted statements that are not clear about who supports them or how they were arrived at. For example, "strong radical right campaigns have emerged" in line 18 or "opponents of the IC also harassed and persecuted actors defending the IC" in line 223.

·      Some correlations are established that are not clear: for example, it is stated on the one hand that the opposition campaigns have made possible the non-ratification of the IC in some countries, but in others, as in Poland, there was ratification in spite of the campaigns. If in Poland the campaigns started earlier and the treaty was signed, it is not clear why the campaigns have blocked the signature in other countries. Although it is very interesting to open the debate on the change that made that something ratified, then there was no agreement on ratifying it. And also, to know why in some countries it was approved and not in others, despite the mobilizations.

·      There are some concepts taken for granted, which are neither introduced nor developed, only mentioned. For example: "gendered political violence" lines 51-52 or "style vis-a-vis state agencies" lines 408-409. If these terms are a novelty, explain why.

·      The article does not have a clear structure. It lacks a state of the art or theoretical framework section, normally placed before the methods section. If “3.The Rise of Anti-Gender Campaigns" is state of the art, it should go before methods. If “4.Targeting the Istanbul Convention" is part of the State of the Art, it would be a sub-section of the previous section.

·      The methodology section could also be improved. For example, it would be necessary to justify why these four countries were chosen. This section could also benefit from a better explanation and citation of concepts such as "critical frame analysis." The methodology can also be better developed if it is divided into sub-sections such as study participants, data collection, and data analysis. For the study participants, the profiles of the people interviewed could be explained, and even a table would be great.

·      One of my biggest concerns about methods is the names of people who appear in the manuscript. Are they real? Do you have permission to use them? Explain how anonymity is protected, in the methods section.

·      There is no results section. Is section 5. “The implications for Feminist Actors Working in the Field of VAW" a results section? If section "6. Women's Organizations Responses: Re-Strategizing and Resilience" is also results, this would have to be a sub-section of the previous one.

·      Reading the results, I am curious to know the vision of the victims of gender violence in these countries, but I understand that this has not been the aim of this paper.

·      The topic is interesting, but it could be made more scientific. The results seem more like a description of a newsletter or a media article, than a scientific paper. There seem to be some political statements talking about governments of specific countries, and it is also difficult to understand sometimes how the conclusions described have been reached; for example, the statement on line 262 "provoked fear among other women's rights activists”.

·      A Discussion section is also missing, in which the results obtained with the scientific literature on the subject are discussed.

Having made these changes, I consider that the article could be published.

 

Author Response

Dear Reviewer 2,

 

Thank you for constructive comments. We appreciate them and we have for the most part integrated them. See our detailed response to each comment, below.

 

1.     You point out “There are some unquoted statements that are not clear about who supports them or how they were arrived at. For example, "strong radical right campaigns have emerged" in line 18 or "opponents of the IC also harassed and persecuted actors defending the IC" in line 223.

 

We have now rewritten one of these statements and added references for the other one.

 

2.     You say: “Some correlations are established that are not clear: for example, it is stated on the one hand that the opposition campaigns have made possible the non-ratification of the IC in some countries, but in others, as in Poland, there was ratification in spite of the campaigns. If in Poland the campaigns started earlier and the treaty was signed, it is not clear why the campaigns have blocked the signature in other countries. Although it is very interesting to open the debate on the change that made that something ratified, then there was no agreement on ratifying it. And also, to know why in some countries it was approved and not in others, despite the mobilizations.”

 

We have now inserted an explanation on why some countries ratified and others not despite having debates about and opposition to the Convention. We have elaborated on this extensively in other work which we can not referenced. We also tested our hypotheses on the factors that explain (non-) ratification on a larger sample. The referenced article is still unpublished and under review currently.

 

3.     You find some concepts not clarified. “There are some concepts taken for granted, which are neither introduced nor developed, only mentioned. For example: "gendered political violence" lines 51-52 or "style vis-a-vis state agencies" lines 408-409. If these terms are a novelty, explain why.”

 

This is a very important comment. We have now developed further our theorization of opposition to gender equality and how we see the place of gendered political violence in this. We have added a paragraph defining the concept.

The other expression we have now changed to not sound like a concept, because we did not mean it to be a theoretical concept.

 

4.     You say: “The article does not have a clear structure.”

 

We have made the structure more clear now and also projected it more clearly in the introduction. We have swapped methods with theory sections and changed the theory section to be clear what it means to do. We have also clarified which are the three research results sections.

 

5.     You want to know more on methods: “The methodology section could also be improved. For example, it would be necessary to justify why these four countries were chosen. This section could also benefit from a better explanation and citation of concepts such as "critical frame analysis." The methodology can also be better developed if it is divided into sub-sections such as study participants, data collection, and data analysis. For the study participants, the profiles of the people interviewed could be explained, and even a table would be great.”

 

We have now inserted additional information on case selection, research design, frame analysis and data collection

 

6.     Your other comment about methods: “One of my biggest concerns about methods is the names of people who appear in the manuscript. Are they real? Do you have permission to use them? Explain how anonymity is protected, in the methods section.”

 

In the different waves of the research process on gender-based violence in CEE we conducted several waves of interviews with civil society activists working on the field and with representatives of international organizations. These interviews are all anonymous. We now cut initials and replaced them with codes. Other interview data that we refer to comes from various human rights reports and it often is not anonymous. In these cases, we clearly marked the names and made reference to what is the source of the quote. We now made referencing fully anonymous where necessary and consistent along the above lines.

 

7.     You are saying: “Reading the results, I am curious to know the vision of the victims of gender violence in these countries, but I understand that this has not been the aim of this paper.”

 

This could be an interesting addition to this research, but our research has not engaged with this so far, we have looked at political processes, but not public attitudes and victim surveys.

 

8.     You argue that some statements are not supported by evidence: “There seem to be some political statements talking about governments of specific countries, and it is also difficult to understand sometimes how the conclusions described have been reached; for example, the statement on line 262 "provoked fear among other women's rights activists”.

 

Evidence for this statement follows in the second part of the paragraph when we say:

“Piotrowska told Human Rights Watch, ‘I think that what happened with BABA and Autonomia was to incite fear in other organizations. I am sure that was one of the goals’ (HRW, 2019:54). Another protester echoed the sense of intimidation, stating she ‘felt the breath of the government on my back [during Black Protest preparations]. The climate of our whole country is such that, if you do something against [those in] power, [those in] power will destroy you’ (ibid). […] ‘NGOs have been portrayed as a form of evil that is funded by outside forces seeking to destroy Bulgarian society. The Bulgarian government does not take any measures to protect NGOs from these manipulations and attacks.’ This makes ‘the situation in Bulgaria uncertain and very worrying, both for women victims of domestic violence and for non-governmental organizations, which are still the only ones providing assistance to these women’”

 

9.     Finally you point out that “A Discussion section is also missing, in which the results obtained with the scientific literature on the subject are discussed.”

 

We see our concluding section as a discussion section too. We now changed its title to make this more clear.

 

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I don't have any substantial comments or suggestions. The article is excellent and very well written. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer, thank you for taking the time to carefully read our paper and we appreciate your praise for our article!