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This new book brings together research and analyses from five continents in order to promote a global perspective on the thoroughly global phenomenon of the current culture wars around sex and gender. The contributions show how transnational networks spread discourses that were developed in the Global North, and how they become re-articulated in different national, political and religious contexts.In recent years, issues of gender and sexuality have become a political battlefield on which far-right, religious and conservative actors wage their war against liberal and left-wing ideas, as well as emancipatory movements. 'Anti-Gender' crusades, which had originally been launched by the Vatican, deeply impacted societies and politics especially as these discourses were adopted by the secular far-right. Campaigns against sexual and reproductive rights, against gender equality and sexual diversity were waged from Russia to the United States and from Latin America to Japan.

Locating the issue of feminism in the institutional context of the print media, we discover two popular versions of feminism that the media promote, a feminism of choice' and a 'traditional feminism'. At the same time, they express hostility, both covert and not-so-covert, to organised women's movements. This simultaneous cooptation and backlash is seemingly a sign of a con sensus over some of feminism's demands, such as equality, while it also perverts the agenda of feminism itself—in the interests of a newly liberalised economy and a resurgent majoritarian religious political party movement.

An urgent need to rethink sexual difference and equality has motivated some of the best recent feminist thought. Nowhere has this been more true than in the field of law, where feminist legal scholars have developed a widely read body of theory. Within law, the postmodern legal feminists have brought a unique perspective, making use of deconstructive strategies to expose contradictory and repressed elements within legal texts. In Postmodern Legal Feminism, Mary Joe Frug charts a course for future feminist thinking about law. She builds on advances made by earlier generations of legal theorists: the liberal feminists who stressed equality, the radical feminists who stressed male domination and sexuality, and the cultural feminists who stressed the positive virtues of traditional women's values. But at the same time she identifies the limitations of these earlier strands of legal feminism and demonstrates, through concrete analysis of legal doctrines, texts, and strategies, why postmodern feminism offers more hope for women. The book is unusual because it offers not simply a theoretical exposition but a series of demonstrations of the power of postmodern legal feminist analysis. It does so through a focus on specific examples of legal writing (the Dawson, Harvey and Henderson casebook; the Posner/Rosenfeld and Hillman articles), specific legal doctrines (the impossibility doctrine; the Sears case), and specific legal strategies (the impact of women in the legal profession; the antipornography campaign). It is also unusual in that it demonstrates the relevance of non-legal texts, such as Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice, to law and the relevance of law to such basic social issues as the construction of the meaning of women's bodies.

The apparently hostile attitude toward feminism dominant among both Hungarian women & men is traced to the turn of the century, when the debate revolved around harmful effects of education on women's moral behavior. In the 1949 constitution, women were granted equality with men in all spheres of life. Women's work opportunities were equalized, & basic welfare, child care, & health issues were addressed. Hungarian women soon found themselves in the trap of the double burden of work & home, without any social or public recognition, & deprived of any forum of legitimate protest, since on paper they saw themselves as equal. Political, economic, & social changes since 1989 have afflicted women with new hardships. Today Hungarian women are strained between an increasingly forceful public invitation to withdraw to the exclusive traditional female gender role, & an economic situation that does not allow average families to survive with only one wage earner. Modified AA