In person icon Right-wing populism and gender equality in Europe: opposition to feminist politics, democracy, and effects on political parties

Abstract

This panel aims at broadening our understanding of the relationship between right-wing populism and feminist politics. Populism has become an equally catchy and contested concept in political science, following the transformation of party systems across Europe. Yet, most research has neglected the relationship between gender equality and populism and the obstacles and opportunities for advancing feminist politics within populist parties. Mainstream academic scholarship has analysed the construction of ‘the people’ and ‘the elites’, both in terms of ideology and discourse, giving little consideration to the gendered and racialized structures of power within them (Maiguashca 2019). Similarly, it has paid little attention to the descriptive and substantive representation of women in those parties, tending to neglect the relevance of their gendered practices (Caravantes 2020). Moreover, scholarly debates focusing on populism risk overlooking the challenges to democracy posed by the authoritarian component in the politics of radical right parties (Verloo 2019) and the role of gender in the broader illiberal project of society that radical right populists and antigender parties and movements are shaping through their politics (Paternotte and Verloo 2021; Graff and Korolczuk 2021; Krizsan and Roggeband 2021). By contrast, feminist research has argued for the centrality of gender issues in populist party politics and policy, documenting the effects that populism has for feminist politics and democracy (Dietze and Roth 2020; Sauer 2020; Siim 2020; Lombardo, Kantola and Rubio 2021). This panel aims at furthering this research agenda by delving into the relationship between feminist politics and right-wing populist parties in Europe, as well as into the effects and reactions of other political parties to the challenges posed to democracy and equality by illiberal and anti-gender populist parties. It explores questions such as: What is the relationship between right-wing populism and feminist politics? How does the relationship between right-wing populism and feminist politics challenge and affect democracy? What effects does right-wing populism have on other political parties in relation to gender? How to counteract opposition against gender equality enacted by radical right populist parties? The panel will allow us analyzing right-wing populist parties from different areas of Europe, and levels of government in order to build a more comprehensive gender and intersectional understanding of the political phenomenon of populism and its challenges to democracy and feminist politics.

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