17.11.2020 Elżbieta Korolczuk (University of Warsaw/Södertörn University Stockholm)

Anti-Gender Campaigns, Right-Wing Populism and Elite Change in Central and Eastern Europe in a Comparative Perspective

Dienstag, 17.11.2020, 18 Uhr c.t., digital über Zoom

Today, we witness a new phase of global struggles around gender equality and sexual democracy: the ultraconservative mobilization against “gender ideology” and feminist efforts to counteract it. Anti-gender campaigns, which emerged around 2010 in Europe (Kuhar and Paternotte 2017, Korolczuk and Graff 2018), are not a simple continuation of earlier trends (“backlash”), but part of a new political configuration: democratic backsliding and the rise of right-wing forces. This presentation aims to further the debates on gender, anti-gender and populism, conceptualizing this new trend in terms of an opportunistic synergy between ultraconservative actors and right-wing populists. While much of the data is drawn from the Polish case, I will also discuss transnational networks such as the World Congress of Families and Agenda Europe, and developments in countries such as Italy and France.
The analysis shows that the opportunistic synergy between right-wing populists and anti-gender movements plays out on two distinct levels: ideological/discursive and strategic/organizational. Since populism is not a robust ideological project, it readily feeds on ideas, narrative structure and arguments promoted by the anti-gender ultraconservative movement, albeit often in an opportunistic and selective fashion. Simultaneously, the actors behind anti-gender campaigns use the organizational resources that right-wing parties offer and become the cadres of the new power elite, especially in contexts such as Poland where the latter are in power. What facilitates this collusion is the fact that the ultraconservative critiques of “gender” have been framed in populist – anti-elitist and moralizing – terms. The movement presents itself as a necessary and courageous defense of “the people” (often in their private roles as parents) against powerful and foreign “liberal elites,” with “gender ideology” emphatically identified as a modern version of (western) colonialism.