Framing Gender-Based Violence Discourses in the European Fathers' Rights Movement(s)

The main goal of my paper is to present and analyse the discourses on gender-based violence in the European fathers’ rights movement(s) belonging to the wider group of men’s social movements. Fathers’ rights groups, networks and organisations exist in all European countries and are the most recognisable and “powerful” phenomena among all European men’s movements. However, in spite of its meaning in creating politics and discourse on men, masculinities and gender equality, there is a lack of comprehensive, comparative research on the European dimension of the movement. Therefore, there is a need to conduct analysis on the movement(s) discourses especially with regard to the widely explored issue of gender-based violence, which is one of the most foremost discursive frames both among the movement’s activist and its counter-movements. The analysis will be developed on the basis of a) desk research and b) qualitative research (in-depth interviews and participant observations) on the contemporary European father's rights movements conducted between 2009 and 2011 with 16 members of dozen father’s rights groups in Poland as well as on the ongoing research on European father's rights movements which has been conducted since Fall 2014 in Sweden and United Kingdom. All of the countries represent 3 different European gender regimes and regime this classification to a large extent corresponds to the regional diversification of Europe (Nordic, Eastern and Western European regions) and therefore, can be used in the analysis of multi – country European research projects.