About The Workshop
SW 95- Controlling Bodies, Rights, Labor, and Life: Gender in the Age of War and Authoritarianism
Convenors: Eylem Ümit Atılgan; Gökçe Maraşlı; Nisa Sunca; Ilgın Özkaya Özlüer; Özlem Altınok
Contact: eylemumit@gmail.com
This special workshop explores the contemporary reconfiguration of law, power, and gender under conditions of war and rising authoritarianism. Bringing together interdisciplinary perspectives from legal theory, corporate law, feminist jurisprudence, and socio-legal studies, the panel examines how authoritarian regimes increasingly govern not only political institutions but also bodies, reproduction, labor, and life itself. It seeks to analyze how legal mechanisms are mobilized to consolidate power while reshaping gender relations and eroding the boundaries of rights, equality, and public responsibility.
The workshop is grounded in the concept of “control” as a central modality of governance in contemporary authoritarian contexts. Rather than dismantling legal frameworks, these regimes tend to repurpose and instrumentalize law in order to legitimize interventions into domains that have historically been framed as private or autonomous. In doing so, they blur the boundaries between public and private spheres, while simultaneously redefining the scope of legal protection. Law, in this context, does not simply regulate social relations; it actively produces new hierarchies of vulnerability by determining whose bodies are protected, whose labor is valued, and whose lives are rendered expendable.
From the perspective of legal and social philosophy, this transformation raises fundamental questions about the nature of normativity, the relationship between law and power, and the status of rights under conditions of democratic backsliding. The panel engages with the concept of autocratic legalism to interrogate how legal forms can be used to mask substantive erosion of rights, and how legality itself may become a vehicle for authoritarian consolidation. It also draws on feminist legal theory to highlight the centrality of gender in these processes, particularly in relation to the governance of reproduction, the persistence of structural inequalities in labor markets, and the reassertion of patriarchal norms.
The first presentation, “Authoritarian Regimes and the Glass Ceiling: A Corporate Law Perspective” by Nisa Sunca, examines how authoritarian political environments shape corporate governance structures and reinforce gender inequality in the workplace. By focusing on the persistence of the glass ceiling, the paper highlights how legal and institutional arrangements under authoritarianism may limit women’s access to leadership positions, even in formally regulated corporate settings.
Gökçe Maraşlı’s paper, “Reproductive Rights During War and Armed Conflict: Reproductive Injustice,” shifts the focus to the intersection of armed conflict and reproductive rights. It analyzes how war conditions exacerbate structural inequalities and produce forms of reproductive injustice, where women’s autonomy over their bodies is constrained not only by direct violence but also by the erosion or strategic manipulation of legal protections.
In “Authoritarian Politics of Gender across Borders: Pronatalism and the Criminalization of Abortion in the U.S. and Türkiye,” Özlem Altınok offers a comparative perspective, tracing the rise of pronatalist policies and anti-abortion measures in different political contexts. The paper demonstrates how authoritarian tendencies can manifest across borders, revealing convergences in gender politics even within formally distinct legal systems, and raising questions about the global circulation of illiberal norms.
Eylem Ümit Atılgan’s presentation, “Judicial Reform Packages of an Autocratic Regime and the Women’s Movement,” critically examines the use of legal reforms as instruments of authoritarian consolidation. Drawing on the concept of autocratic legalism, the paper argues that judicial reforms may function to hollow out universal human rights norms while maintaining an appearance of legality. It also highlights the role of the women’s movement in resisting these processes and defending gender equality as a normative and political project.
Finally, Ilgın Özkaya Özlüer’s contribution, “The Politics of Abandonment: Stray Animals and the Collapse of the Public,” expands the analytical framework beyond human-centered approaches to address the governance of life and the erosion of public responsibility. By examining policies concerning stray animals, the paper reveals how state withdrawal and the normalization of abandonment are integral to authoritarian governance, inviting reflection on broader questions of biopolitics, care, and the boundaries of the political community.
Taken together, these contributions demonstrate that gender is not a peripheral concern but a central analytical lens for understanding contemporary transformations of law and power. The panel argues that the control of bodies, rights, labor, and life constitutes a defining feature of authoritarian governance in times of war and crisis. By situating these issues within the broader framework of legal and social philosophy, the workshop aims to contribute to critical debates on the future of rights, equality, and justice in an increasingly unstable global order.
