Strongwomen? A Comparative Analysis of Gender Discourse in the Electoral Campaigns of Marine Le Pen and Giorgia Meloni

2022 was a momentous year for female leaders in the populist radical right: in the Italian general elections, Giorgia Meloni at the helm of Fratelli d’Italia (FdI), and in the French presidential elections Marine Le Pen at the helm of Rassemblement National (RN) scored meaningful electoral results, despite different outcomes. This paper investigates the ways in which female populist radical right party leaders present themselves as female leaders as well as they frame gender-related questions. So far, the bulk of the theoretical and empirical literature on gender and populism has focused on populist parties’ variegated ideological stances and discursive styles on gender, leaving the analysis of populist leadership understudied. This paper contributes to the growing scholarly attention devoted to the case study of Le Pen’s female leadership and stance on gender issues, and of Meloni’s female leadership and gender-related posture. Theoretically, we innovatively rework the existing concepts of hegemonic femininity and of ‘strongmen’ to create the concept of ‘strongwomen’. Methodologically, we use qualitative discourse analysis of the TikTok and Twitter accounts of the two female leaders. We find varying degrees of hostility against abortion and non-binary gender identities, and unanimous promotion of the ‘traditional’ family, plus the rejection of surrogacy. Meloni and Le Pen are emblematic ‘strongwomen’: while championing women’s rights and extolling their female qualities of compassion and motherliness, they adopt toughness and assertiveness typical of charismatic leaders to push for the pre-eminence of the heterosexual family over LGBTQ+ rights and abortion rights and deploy nativist and masculinist tropes when imposing the view of immigrant women as in need of salvation, and immigrant men as perpetrating women’s oppression.