"Is the current economic crisis in Europe going to become a repeat of the 1930s – a return of the European nightmare?" asked Sylvia Walby during a public lecture co-hosted by the School of Public Policy and the Center for Policy Studies at CEU on September 15. Walby's keynote address launched the Gender and the Economic Crisis conference that took place on September 16.
Walby, OBE, who is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and UNESCO Chair in Gender Research at Lancaster University, detailed the ways in which the economic crisis is restructuring the gender regime. She noted that the 2007 crisis has "cascaded" and is continuing to cascade through society – "from one institutional domain to another" – and that it is having a profound impact as it does.
The gendering of finance, the economy, the fiscal system, and politics affects the nature of the crisis. The gendering of democracy matters, she said. It has an impact on issues such as government priorities for expenditures. Walby observed that the crisis is also cascading into violence – especially domestic violence and violence against women.
"The architecture of the financial system is gendered," said Walby. She elaborated by noting that a lot of decision making in government and on corporate boards before and during the crisis had been by men; and that this has been challenged "post-crisis."
Walby described the EU as "a project for peace" and "significant for gender equality." She went on to say that the crisis was raising questions about the future of the EU and its projects.