Progress and Backlash in Women’s and LGBTQIA+ Rights (2010–2025): A Comparative Study of East Asia, China, Turkey, and the European Union"

The focus of this thesis is the consolidation of women’s and LGBTQ+ rights in East Asia and China, Türkiye, and the European Union (EU) from 2010 to 2025. Contrary to diffusionist frameworks that cast the West as a progressive ‘model’ and Asia as a ‘follower,’ emerging evidence signals a reversal of dynamics: China, Türkiye and some Western countries are undergoing a conservative backlash, while many East Asian countries are slowly improving rights. Specific examples show this divergence in action: Taiwan first legalized same-sex marriage in 2019, and in 2023 expanded joint adoption rights. Thailand passed an effective marriage equality bill in 2024. The Japanese courts declared the sterilization requirement for legal gender recognition unconstitutional in 2023, and in 2024 recognized same-sex marriage bans as unconstitutional. Singapore in 2022 repealed the criminalization of same-sex intimacy albeit folding heterosexual marriage into its Constitution. Collectively, these shifts indicate a progressive development in a large portion of East Asia. On the other hand, China systematically censors students’ associations, prosecutes feminist activists, and applies wider restrictions to LGBTQ+ organizing, and this repression continues to deepen. In 2021, Türkiye withdrew from the Istanbul Convention and continues to ban Pride marches, while within the EU, supranational strategies such as the LGBTIQ Equality Strategy (2020–2025) coexist with national-level retrenchment in Hungary and Poland. By combining case studies, rights indices, and event cataloguing, this research demonstrates the coexistence of progressive norm expansion and regressive backlash across states. This research argues for a reconceptualization of comparative human rights scholarship that accounts for not only the diffusion of progressive norms but also the transnational spread of conservative and anti-gender politics.