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Varieties of Antigenderism: The Politicization of Gender Issues Across European Populist Radical Right Parties

Gender
Political Parties
Populism
Comparative Perspective
Susanne Reinhardt
Freie Universität Berlin
Susanne Reinhardt
Freie Universität Berlin
Elena Pavan
Università degli Studi di Trento
Annett Heft

Abstract

This study compares the politicization of gender issues across European populist radical right (PRR) parties in three countries, each party situated in a specific gendered opportunity structure. PRR actors aim to maintain conservative social structures and norms, which are at the core of far-right ideologies, and therefore oppose gender and sexual equality. Extant research demonstrates that PRR parties’ politicization of gender issues is context-specific, aligned to laws and dominant opinions as well as party genealogy and ideology. We understand this context as the gendered opportunity structure in which parties operate and analyze PRR parties’ politicization of gender issues in relation to the state and acceptance of gender and sexual equality, the party’s issue repertoire and the party electorate’s attitude towards gender and sexual equality. Simultaneously, we acknowledge that PRR parties might converge in core features of their antigenderism, and aim to disentangle this multidimensional interrelation. With this study, we aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of how context-specific gendered opportunity structures influence the extent and manner in which PRR parties politicize gender issues. To conceptualize the politicization of gender issues by PRR parties, we distinguish between four dimensions: First, politicization is conceptualized and measured with respect to (1) the overall salience of gender issues as such. Second, we consider the (2) broader topical context in which gender issues are embedded by PRR parties and (3) the specific gender issues addressed as well as (4) parties’ positions on these issues. Based on variations in the gendered opportunity structures, we select the German AfD, the Italian Lega and the Sweden Democrats for our case study. We conduct a quantitative content analysis of the parties’ Facebook (n=28187) and Twitter (n=13490) posts in the course of the EP election campaign 2019. To assess the salience of gender issues, we draw a sample from all posts during the study period and measure the relative importance of gender issues in the parties’ communication. For the analysis of the parties' contextualization and positioning towards gender issues, we select a sub-corpus of gender-related posts through a dictionary-based approach. Based on the quantitative content classification and community detection, we build semantic networks to display the contextualization of gender issues. Our results show how context-specific gendered opportunities shape PRR parties’ gender discourses. In Germany, given visible female presence in government, AfD strongly politicizes female and LGBTQI+ leadership in politics. In Italy, in the absence of marriage equality, Lega focuses on the politicization of adoption rights and non-heterosexual family models. In Sweden, in a context with a high regard for gender equality, SD focusses on a femonationalist discourse that links women’s rights to immigration and Islam. This instrumentalization of women’s rights is a transnationally shared discourse across the analyzed parties. Its salience is higher in contexts with a higher regard for gender and sexual equality, where parties face more obstacles to contest gender and sexual equality openly.