“Our Family – Our Rules”: Mobilizations against Gender in Bulgaria (2018–2020)

The processes of disaffection with mainstream politics and the rise of radical nationalist parties (2007–2017) created political opportunities for the emergence of anti-gender campaigns in Bulgaria. They unfolded in two stages: during the first stage, with the attacks against the Istanbul Convention in 2018, a discursive change was in effect that opened political opportunities for new conservative politics; while during the second stage, with the attacks against the National Strategy for the Child in 2019–2020, new actors emerged mobilizing around conservative values in the form a grassroots movement. Political figures with strong institutional positions engineered the anti-gender discourse and formulated a program aiming to construct a new normality around “the sanctity of the family”. In resonance with the political discourse, a grassroots movement appeared in 2019. Dismantling the welfare state and backsliding in family-orientated institutional policies also provoked resistance.