Literature review of 406 academic articles from feminist, queer and masculinity studies (2008-2023 / Spain, Germany, Denmark, UK, Switzerland and Hungary).

Literature review of 406 academic articles from feminist, queer and masculinity studies (2008-2023) / Spain, Germany, Denmark, UK, Switzerland and Hungary

This dataset represents the extensive and comprehensive literature review of 406 research articles that were analysed through an in-depth qualitative abductive and iterative classification process. The codification covers a period of fifteen years (2008-2015) in the six countries of interest to UNTWIST (Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), with the purpose of creating a typology of Gender Based Needs (GBNs).

Due to the importance of covering the breadth of ‘needs’, the data collection was designed with the goal to reach saturation of areas and dimensions covered in each country context (see detailed explanation below). This means that the data should not be seen as representative in terms of the number of articles on each topic per country but rather as representing the total coverage of topics and approaches in feminist theory over the time.

Our codification identifies a set of needs that, while not exhaustive, are considered as indicative of important trends and needs that have emerged during this time across the six countries under investigation.

The basis of the Typology relies on insights from gender-focused research, including feminist, queer and masculinity studies. This choice was rooted in the observation that these bodies of literature have a long-standing tradition of analysing policy issues through a ‘gender lens’, thus making visible the role of gender in politics and policy and aiming to understand and explain political and social events, behaviours, and dynamics through a focus on gender. The focus of feminist research on gender as an analytical category helps us to assess how gender factors into political and social needs and demands and to identify ‘gender-based needs’ (GBNs), i.e., those needs and demands that are discussed with specific reference to gender. The theoretical assumption is here that such needs are rooted in (e.g., as the effect of certain configurations of) the social and political structures that have emerged around the social distinctions between woman/female/feminine and man/male/masculine. Based on insights on the invisible and informal nature of gender as political and social force, we further assume that their relationship with gender is often missed by those approaches that do not center a gender lens. This means that we define feminist, queer and masculinity studies as best suited to derive and assess relevant areas and types of GBNs.