Webinar: Feminist voices from Hungary: Women’s rights in the post-Orban era?

Date and Time: 28 May 17-18.30 CET

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ezpIw74ySluPz6BYOLem3A#/registration 

Following the historic elections held in April 2026, Hungary has entered a period of systemic transformation as after sixteen years, the era of the ‘hybrid regime’ under the tight grip of Viktor Orban’s government has come to an end, giving way to a new and complex political landscape. 

This WIDE+ webinar brings together Hungarian feminist speakers and professionals to share their first-hand perspectives on the ‘Post-Orbán’ reality. We will explore the pivotal role civil society played in this transition, the political power of women in Hungary over time, and analyze the emerging opportunities and challenges for the advancement of human rights in this new era.  

This webinar is organised as part of a second online series of WIDE ‘ Feminist Alternatives for Europe’s uncharted future’, focusing on Eastern Europe and Central Asia. This is the second in a series of three held in May and June, 2026

Women In Development Europe+, in short WIDE+, is a European feminist network of feminist activists and organisations, women’s rights advocates, gender specialists, migrant women associations, as well as other NGOs that promote intersectional feminisms.

Join us for an insightful conversation as we discuss the strategies, hopes, and future scenarios for feminist realities in the new Hungary.

Speakers

• Andrea Peto is a Professor in the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University, Vienna, Austria, and a Doctor of Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2005, she was awarded the Officer’s Cross Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary by the President of the Hungarian Republic and the Bolyai Prize by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2006. In 2018 she was awarded the All European Academies Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values and in 2022 University of Oslo Human Rights Award. She is Doctor Honoris Causa of Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden. She is teaching courses on European comparative social and gender history, gender and politics, women’s movements, qualitative methods, oral history, and the Holocaust.  Author of 8 monographs, editor of 32 volumes, and 327 articles and chapters in books published in 25 languages.

• Lili Rutai: is a freelance journalist and podcaster from Budapest, Hungary, with bylines in The Guardian, Foreign Policy, The Observer, RFE/RL, Al Jazeera, Euronews, Vice World News, New Lines Magazine and more. She specialises in investigative reporting, international politics and feature writing. As a freelancer, Lili focuses on Central and Eastern Europe. She has reported from Hungary, Ukraine, Romania and Poland; and contributed to multiple investigations – including an award-winning documentary – as a journalist, researcher, and undercover agent. She began her career as an investigative journalist at one of Hungary’s most prestigious outlets before completing her master’s at City, University of London. She later gained experience in news reporting, social media discovery, and OSINT at organisations such as Storyful, Upday, and Factal https://lilirutai.com/ 

• Noemi Martini:  is a Budapest-based journalist, working for HVG, a Hungarian weekly print magazine reporting on social issues and Hungarian current affairs. She is also part of the video team as a reporter and has a two-weekly newsletter covering Hungarian politics from a young female perspective. Previously, Noémi lived in London for seven years writing about contemporary arts and culture for titles such as Elephant Magazine, The Face, and The Calvert Journal. She is a graduate of the University of Westminster and the University of Arts London.

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ezpIw74ySluPz6BYOLem3A#/registration 

Suggested open access readings on illiberal politics: memory politics, higher education, attacks on academic freedom, and gender studies and resistance strategies by Andrea Peto, Professor, CEU, Vienna

What is happening?

1. The Illiberal Academic Authority: An Oxymoron? Berichte für Wissenschaftsgeschichte 4.2021. 461-469. 
2. Dillabough, J.-A., & Peto, A. (2024). Universities in the 21st century: A new battlescape over “public things” and our commonworld. Internationalisation of Higher Education – Policy and Practice, 2024(3), 19–33.
3. New deceptions: How illiberalism is hijacking the university, University World News, 5 May 2024, together with Jo-Anne Dillabough

Why gender?

“Gender as symbolic glue: how ‘gender’ became an umbrella term for the rejection of the (neo)liberal order”, with Weronika Grzebalska, Eszter Kovats, Political Critique, 13.01.2017

https://zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/artikel/gender-as-symbolic-glue/

What is the polypore state?

Andrea Pető, Weronika Grzebalska, How Hungary and Poland have silenced women and stifled human rights, The Huffington Post, 16 October 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-conversation-global/how-hungary-and-poland-ha_b_12486148.html

What are the consequences:

1. Four reasons why Gender Studies has changed because of illiberal attacks, and why it matters. Berliner Blätter 88/2023, 111–115. https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/server/api/core/bitstreams/279b7827-a3ea-479d-95ad-36830269f33d/content
2. Universities risk becoming tinned food with an expiry date, University World News 27 November 2024, together with Rebecka Lettevall and Annika Olsson.

Memory Politics

1. “The New Monument of Victims of Military Sexual Violence in Budapest.” Hungarian Studies Review 48, no. 2 (2021): 209–16. https://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/78636?locale-attribute=de
2. “The Illiberal Memory Politics in Hungary.” Journal of Genocide Research, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2021.1968150.
3. Four Reasons Why Illiberal Politics Appropriated the Memory of 1956 Hungarian Revolution, VerfBlog, 2025/2/03, https://verfassungsblog.de/four-reasons-why-illiberal-politics-appropriated-the-memory-of-1956-hungarian-revolution/.

What can be done?

1. “No Longer the Alexanders, the Napoleons, or the Attilas”: Gender, Illiberalism, and Quiet Resistance,  25 June 205, https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/no-longer-the-alexanders-the-napoleons-or-the-attilas-gender-illiberalism-and-quiet-resistance/
2.    To survive illiberalism’s attacks on HE, we must resist, University World News 29 April 2023
3.   What is to be done when nothing is to be done? Eurozine 10 October 2023
4.  It is time to defend ordinary scholars, not poach talent. UWN 23 April 2025, together with Rebecka Lettevall and Annika Olsson
5. “What makes you hopeful for gender studies in Hungary, in the world?” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 52 no. 1, 2024, pp. 37-47.
6. “Better stories” in higher education. Cunning strategies for gender studies: What can you do when nothing can be done? Can the hangman be an ally of gender studies? Baltic Worlds. 2023. 1-2. 84-90. https://balticworlds.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/BW-2023.1_enkelsidor.pdf
7. Imagining a New Gender Contract for Education in A New Gender Equality Contract for Europe. Feminism and Progressive Politics, eds. Andrea Petö, Laeticia Thissen, Amandine Clavaud, Palgrave Macmillan 2024.

Andrea Peto’s book ‘Viktor Orban’s affairs with women’: https://ceeolpress.com/book/40