This paper is based on ethnographic research carried out in 2010 on gender and activism in the Italian ‘anti-immigration’ party the Northern league (NL), and on an on-going two-year comparative study funded by the European Research Council, focusing on the biographical trajectories of women and men activists in the NL party and the National Front party, France (2012-2014). Few studies have investigated the role played by women activists in radical right ‘anti-immigration’ social movements. Further, existing qualitative studies of women’s activism in these mobilisations fail to compare systematically the practices of women and men. Instead, my research examines both women’s and men’s involvement in the NL. In the NL ideology, the discourse championing traditional models of femininity and the ‘natural’ family coexist with the mobilisation of the theme of women’s rights and gender equality, to legitimate the party’s ‘anti-immigration’ agenda: immigration is associated with sexual violence and gender conservatism, and is represented not only as a threat for women’s physical integrity but also for their rights.
The paper analyses how this paradoxical mobilisation of the idea of women’s rights by the party is reflected in the practices and experiences of male and female activists, by addressing the following questions: how does gender shape the narratives of female and male activists? How do male activists enact or challenge the dominant models of masculinity celebrated by the party? How do female activists challenge sexism within these mobilisations? What is the gendered division of work among male and female activists? Do women achieve any gains in terms of individual and/or collective empowerment through their activism? Finally, the paper addresses the role played by religion in female and male activists’ ‘careers’ and in their conformity to or dissociation from the party’s official discourse, with regard to issues of the family and reproductive rights.
