The anti-gender and homophobic narrative of the Georgian Dream has not ended. This time, the time has come for a specific concept — gender has become the “enemy” and they are trying to scare the population with this word. On April 1, the Georgian Dream parliament, along with restrictive laws on the media and non-governmental organizations, also removed gender from the legislative space. Amendments were made to the Rules of Procedure of the Georgian Parliament and dozens of laws, including:
On gender equality;
On the rights of persons with disabilities;
On the elimination of all forms of discrimination;
On the prevention of violence against women and/or domestic violence, protection and assistance to victims of violence;
On early and preschool education;
About broadcasting;
About entrepreneurs;
About volunteering;
On international protection;
About public service;
On reducing food loss and waste and on food donation;
About labor inspection;
About normative acts;
Local Self-Government Code;
In the Criminal Code.
In the explanatory note, Georgian Dream MPs call gender an artificial term and claim that its introduction into Georgian legislation was “through active lobbying by foreign influences and their representatives.” The term, which Georgian Dream calls artificial, is actually used in science to denote social gender. If biological sex is related to physical, bodily differences between women and men, the concept of “gender” refers to psychological, behavioral, social, and cultural characteristics.
“Gender is the set of physical, biological, psychological, and behavioral characteristics that define the differences between men and women in societies. This modern meaning of gender was originally established to denote a socio-cultural construct of femininity and masculinity, distinct from biological sex,” we read about the definition of gender in the Dictionary-Encyclopedia of Social Sciences.
Here is also noted that the word was first used in this sense by sexologist John Mooney in 1955 to distinguish between biological sex and social roles (before that, “gender” referred only to the grammatical category of sex), however, the use of the word in this sense only became widespread in the 1970s, under the influence of feminist theory texts. In addition, the idea that the social construct of women and men cannot be reduced to biological sex is much older than the use of “gender” itself in this sense. The reference book states that already in the 1930s, Margaret Mead distinguished between biological sex and sexual roles; And Simone de Beauvoir’s famous phrase “One is not born a woman, but becomes a woman,” from her 1949 book The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe), is considered by many feminist theorists to be the first clear formulation of the thesis that the differences that define the identities of women and men are socially constructed and independent of biological sex.
Instead of scientific papers and theories, Georgian Dream MPs mentioned the most frequently used phrases for propaganda in their explanatory note to reinforce their anti-gender rhetoric: family values, foreign influence, and biological sex.
The following words were deleted: gender, gender equality, gender issues, gender identity, gender intolerance and replaced with woman, man, “equality of women and men”, “intolerance of equality of women and men”. The law also included the word “special measure” and its definition refers to sexual characteristics instead of gender characteristics.
Human rights and gender researcher Lika Jalaghania, speaking to Aprili Media, says that replacing gender with these terms is artificial. The explanatory note discusses the issue unscientifically, without evidence and basic knowledge, in such a way that its initiator does not even know what gender means and how it differs from “equality between women and men.”
“The concept of equality between women and men is the concept of formal equality. What does formal equality mean? It is equality written in law, which simply tells you that women and men are equal. This fact cannot replace the meaning of gender, because gender helps us see how the roles assigned to women, men, and other groups are socially constructed.”
UNFPA GEORGIA
Lika clarifies that not only from the perspective of social theory, but also scientifically, politically, and statistically, it is completely unjustified for “equality between women and men” to replace the idea of gender equality, as it is much more comprehensive.
“It teaches us and talks to us about how gender roles are built on sex and how these gender roles harm both women and men, and the concept of equality between women and men, which in principle is not well established in our legislation, cannot possibly address this. There was some progress, and now we have gone backwards. This is a completely unacceptable substitution.”
Lika recalls that in the 1970s, when feminist theories began to use gender, it had both sociocultural and functional significance. That is, it began to describe the reality and highlight the differences that women had been facing for many years. It is gender that helps us to identify the foundations of what type of inequality or historical oppression underlies the inequality of women and men in society.
This decision of the Georgian Dream is misogynistic (hatred of women) and at the same time homophobic, says Lika. In her opinion, gender was removed not more in connection with women’s rights, but with LGBTQ+ rights. According to her, Georgian Dream did not need to invent new laws specifically targeting the queer group for propaganda, because it allowed almost any restrictions: for example, the law on “Family Values and Protection of Minors”, previously clarifying the marriage record, both the unity of a man and a woman, as well as the events of July 5-6, attacks on journalists and activists, and at the same time, public speeches by the Dream leaders, which actually allowed violence. However, this time Georgian Dream decided to demonize gender.
“The word gender has never been demonized in our country, because both society and the political spectrum realized that it is not a dangerous word, a word that carries a threat… Now they are trying to demonize the word gender so that later, when it somehow seeps into society and the sense of danger and fear towards this word increases, they can then use it more actively, as if they are protecting us from gender. It is absurd, but this is also one of the goals.”
Lika links this initiative of the Georgian Dream, on the one hand, to the conservative-dictatorial wing of the party from a geopolitical perspective, and on the other hand, to an attempt to conduct some kind of dialogue with Trump.
“If Trump opposses gender, confronts the queer group, if he opposses, for example, trans people, the Dream says that they started before Trump, so in order to communicate with Trump, to establish this connection, they needed these changes. Therefore, this had a geopolitical significance and, perhaps, less domestic propaganda. But we should not rule out that over the years, if we remain in such a reality, it will certainly worsen the situation and gender, or even the issue of gender equality, will definitely become demonized in Georgia. The direct goal may be geopolitics, but as a result, it will definitely cause great harm to the population itself.”
In the long term, along with the terminological damage, the material damage to the human rights defender is also noticeable. As an example, Lika cites gender councils in self-government bodies. This is where the small resources were gathered to meet the needs of women living in the regions and mountainous settlements.
“We read directly in the draft law that it turns out that there is no longer a need for these gender councils and even that small budget… In general, gender equality is one of the main guarantors that will make women, including those living in rural areas, think and understand why autonomy is important, why they should not stay with their abusive spouse, why it is important to strengthen themselves socio-economically so as not to be dependent [on others], we are also missing out on these opportunities.”
Despite the “hard work” of Georgian Dream MPs to remove gender from the legal space, the problems in society in this regard do not disappear with the removal of the term. Gender equality, informing citizens about various forms of violence and discrimination still remain relevant issues in Georgia, as evidenced by studies published in recent months .
For example, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) conducted a study called “Men, Women and Gender Relations in Georgia.” This is part of a long-term study that compares data from 2013, 2019 and 2024 and analyzes perceptions of gender equality, family roles, leadership and violence to identify changes in attitudes over time.
It is noteworthy that according to the IMAGES survey, the perception of gender inequality has decreased — while in 2019 58.7% of respondents thought that gender inequality was a significant challenge in Georgia, in 2024 this figure decreased to 38.7%. However, more people share the opinion that expanding women’s rights is a loss for men:
18.7% believe that women’s gaining rights means men’s losing them (in 2019 — 10.3%).
20.7% think that women’s employment takes jobs away from men, which is almost three times higher than the 7.6% rate in 2019.
According to the study, care and household work in Georgia is still divided along gender lines, with childcare, cooking, and cleaning the house largely considered women’s responsibilities.
The survey shows that a majority of men (69%) and a significant portion of women (47%) believe that men should have the final say in decision-making, and women should not question this decision. In 2019, both men (68%) and women (34%) were less likely to agree with this view.
Domestic violence, femicide, rape, forced marriage, and other forms of violence or discrimination are examples of how society today does not consider women equal to men, and this is reflected in various areas, including violent acts against women, mainly committed by men, says Tamar Dekanosidze, a lawyer and the representative of the Eurasia region of the organization Equality Now.
Tamar explains that removing the term gender from the legislation is a denial of historically established discrimination against women, its systemic and structural nature. This is a message that discrimination against women does not deserve attention and, in effect, says that patriarchy does not exist in the country and women do not suffer from the severity of inequality. Tamar clarifies that removing gender from the legislation blinds the laws towards women and fails to ensure proper protection of their rights.
FB PAGE
“Removing gender from criminal law deprives the essence, content and basis of a wide range of crimes committed against women (i.e. crimes that are primarily committed by women and that if the person were not a woman, would most likely not have been subjected to this type of violence) of the recognition and appropriate punishment of the discriminatory motive of these crimes. Without such recognition, the severity of violence against women is diminished and perpetrators may not be held accountable, and in the absence of political will to address these issues, perpetrators may more often evade responsibility.”
The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Istanbul Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights of Women, on Gender Equality and on Guarantees Against Violence — in recent years, Georgia has become a signatory to a number of international documents with specific obligations. Accordingly, removing gender from legislation may not only cause problems and uncertainties at the local level, but also conflict with the principles of international law. We asked Tamar Dekanosidze to clarify this issue:
“Gender is a historically established and widely established term and concept in international human rights law. By removing gender from its legislation, Georgia violates the core human rights treaties that the country has undertaken to implement. Among them, the European Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence; the European Convention on Human Rights (contrary to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, which interprets the content of the Convention), the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women and the standards developed by the Committee on the Convention, etc. When these bodies consider an issue related to Georgia, they will establish a violation of the obligations provided for by these instruments and demand that the state eliminate regressive and discriminatory policies and legislative amendments adopted in its context.”
When we talk about gender, its demonization and removal from legal language, it is imperative to consider the attempt to exclude transgender, gender non-conforming, non-binary, or other people whose gender expression does not identify with the sex assigned at birth, or whose gender identity does not conform to traditional binary norms.
The queer community remains one of the most vulnerable groups in Georgia. Education, healthcare, employment, broadcasting, demonstrations, public opinion — restrictive laws adopted by the Georgian Dream in recent years have further expanded the spaces where discriminatory and unequal conditions exist for LGBTQ+ people. This time, the disappearance of gender from legal language, in addition to the inability to comprehensively see “inequality between women and men,” also means that transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people will become legally invisible. This is also stated in the statement of the Center for Social Justice, which the organization distributed in connection with these legislative changes.
“With such a change, they lose protection from discrimination, violence, and social exclusion. Today, LGBTQ people in Georgia represent an extremely vulnerable group and are often targeted by violence, and hate-motivated violence is particularly common against transgender women.”
The statement also states that anti-gender policies are an important tool for authoritarian regimes, used to strengthen social control and weaken critical social movements and groups.
“Authoritarian governments often attack gender equality because it is linked to democratic values, human rights, and principles of social justice. By restricting gender rights, autocracies seek to weaken civil society, feminist, and LGBTQ movements, which are often the initiators of democratic change in transitional democracies. These processes are also closely linked to the interest of authoritarian regimes to create an “enemy within” and to mobilize conservative and nationalist sentiments to consolidate power and increase social polarization.”
Various studies confirm that the main creator and spreader of the anti-gender narrative in Georgia is the Georgian Dream, along with openly pro-government media platforms and representatives of far-right groups. This time, there is an attempt to create another “enemy icon” from the term gender and use it for political propaganda. However, beyond the propaganda, in real life, what consequences and what impact the elimination of this concept will have on gender roles, inequality, oppression and discrimination, this very fact remains a matter of concern for human rights defenders.
