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In this article, we examine a decade of parliamentary debates related to the topic of family to understand the reasons and the rhetorical strategies that drive the support of Romanian MPs for the traditional family. Starting from four themes identified in the literature as relevant for the topic of family—national identity, religion, heteronormativity, and children—we identify the dominant definition of the "traditional family" as that of the Christian Romanian family founded and defended by ancestors—that is, union between a man and a woman for the purpose of reproduction—as the only place that can guarantee that children will grow up in a healthy and moral environment. This hegemonic narrative is enhanced by the anti-gender campaign repertoire and strengthened by populist logic, aiming to restore true Romanian values—Christian, ancestral, and national—in opposition to contemporary Western relativism and the alleged colonial cultural project of gender equality+ politics. The decadent present, threatening national identity, the continuity of the people, Christian values, the natural gender order, or the safety of children, can be saved only by returning to the traditional family, which functions as a hegemonic signifier re-imposing, in the logic of the narrative of return, a nationalist, conservative, and religious definition of the family, based on biological and natural foundations and necessarily heteronormative and chauvinist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the gendered assessment of political leadership in Romania. Using recent survey data obtained from a nationally representative sample, we found that men and women are unevenly impacted by various individual, household, and socio-cultural variables that have an unequal influence on their support for the cultural belief that men make better political leaders than women do. Our findings suggest that women's stereotypical view of male leadership is eroded mostly by education, the presence of older children in the household, and upholding a feminist agenda. For men, only the category of those with tertiary education has a lower likelihood to believe in this stereotype, compared with the reference category of men with secondary education or below. In addition, men are less inclined to support this cultural belief when they choose reading as first leisure preference as compared to men privileging other leisure activities, while for women this relationship has not been identified. A higher income of respondents as compared to their spouses'/partners' income reinforces the cultural stereotype of men as natural political leaders among male respondents, while for women a positive association is found in relationship with their partners undertaking masculine activities such as fixing things around the house. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Care is a multi-layered concept that includes not only formal/informal aspects and public/private significations and effects, but also inherent political and gendered dimensions. Starting from the perspective according to which care is political by definition, this article takes a closer look at the political regulation of care in post-socialist Romania in order to reveal how it is conceived and delimited as a political concern, as well as in order to inquiry the extent to which care has been politicised (or not) after the fall of the former political regime. When and how does it become part of the strategic political plans as main political-administrative documents? And to what extent does the national political discourse encompass care as a real political problem? Seeking to address these questions, this article has a twofold structure. The first part of the article is dedicated to an overview of existing scholarship regarding care as a political concern. This analysis is indispensable for an in-depth understanding of the ways in which this issue has been tackled and theorized so far. Second, the article consists of a documentary analysis of the main governmental plans and political strategies elaborated between 1992 and 2020 in order to analyse the hegemonic political approach to the topic of care in post-socialist Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that gender studies are a sensitive indicator for the quality of Romanian democracy. How gender studies have been established and (partly) institutionalized, the ideological and institutional obstacles that they have faced, as well as the political values and stakes that are present when they are promoted or contested are significant elements for understanding the process of democratization within the academic space, as well as the extent and quality of democracy in the country after 1989. In the first part, I analyze the dynamics of the establishment and institutionalization of gender studies in Romania, filling the gaps of current literature on the topic, especially when it comes to the more recent developments. This investigation allows the identification of relevant factors that are specific to the Romanian context and favoured or hindered the presence of these studies in local universities. In the second part, I analyze briefly the academic, ideological and political opposition to feminism, feminist studies and gender studies in Romania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results of the 2012 parliamentary elections indicates a rather small number of women as MP's, when compared with the situation (statistical data) in other European states. Moving from a diacronical and sincronical analysis of the statistical data indicating the political representation of women in post-communist Romania, the present paper aims to reflect on this under representation as a central element in the attempt to understand and analize the present day Romanian democratic. Thus, it presents the main theoretical concepts and two analitical models and aims to analyze one of the factors that influences, according to the theoretical framework, the presence of women within representative political structure: namely the legislative frame. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]