As part of her SNSF Ambizione project, Dr Leandra Bias is joining the European Studies team. We welcome her and are delighted to have her with us.

This Ambizione project runs from 2025 to 2030 and examines why, how, and with what effects on feminist civil society the Russian and Ukrainian political elites instrumentalise gender in order to ‘sell’ their respective political systems to their allies. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine marks a confrontation between two countries at different stages of the (de-)democratisation process: one consolidating its authoritarian rule and the other (further) democratising. To indicate the nature of their systems, Russian and Ukrainian political elites explicitly present this war as a conflict between gender orders, with Ukraine adopting liberal commitments to gender equality, while Russia promotes its ‘traditional values’.

The project will analyse the instrumentalisation of gender by elites since 2022 through three research questions:

• Q1. (Motives) Through which discursive frameworks have political elites in Russia and Ukraine instrumentalised gender since the full-scale invasion to gain external legitimacy for their political systems?
• Q2.1 (Strategies) How do elites adapt these frameworks to different audiences?
• Q2.2 (Strategies) How does the instrumentalisation by elites vary across different areas of gender equality policy?
• Q3. (Effect) How does Ukrainian and Russian feminist civil society perceive the instrumentalisation of gender as influencing the opportunities and restrictions available to it in different areas of gender equality policy?