Description
Socially and politically, many things have changed for women in recent years. A gender political "turn-back" is taking place. Power relations shift in micro- and macro-social areas. The election of Donald Trumps as US President – a women-disparaging man who presents a very flexible relationship not only to the reality of facts but also to the dignity of women – marks a strengthening of male-chauvinist power. Worldwide, women have been pushed back into pre-feminist places. The educated and experienced woman, who also stood for election, lost. She did not lose absolutely, but relatively. Her loss had been conditioned by the system of elections and she can easily be seen as a victim of established power structures. With her, women worldwide lost. At first glance, this seems to be very far from Europe and very placative, but it is not. Fine structures change. Realities shift. Facts lose weight. Post-factual arguments are blurring axioms of logic and science. Convictions are being based on opinions. Positions are becoming flexible. In the shifting of identity and virtuality, reality is being redefined. Feminism and Gender Studies are being defamed as ideology. Respect relativizes itself in the face of new social power relations and anonymous virtual possibilities. All of these put basic social values in question. Fundamentalism of all kinds gains space. Churches, synagogues and mosques thus become symbolic spaces of political power or powerlessness. The "European Society for Women in Theological Research" (ESWTR) dedicates its current journal to the theological reflections on religious experiences, social border-situations and traumatic events, which in Europe are not only symbolically linked to the last US presidential elections. With its deliberate interreligious and theological perspective, the journal aims to contribute to the public debate on political events in Europe.
