Disentangling and Locating the “Global Right

Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe

Bibliographic Data

ID8045992
AuthorsD Paternotte (0000-0002-6362-7674, Université Libre de Bruxelles), Roman Kuhar (0000-0003-4294-7529, University of Ljubljana)
Year2018
Volume6
Issue3
Pages6-19
Publication date2018-09-14
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitics and Governance (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2183-2463 • E-ISSN: 2183-2463
PublisherCogitatio (PUBLISHER • PT)
DOI10.17645/pag.v6i3.1557
OpenAlexW2892213024
LanguageEN
Citations received246
References cited32

This article examines the development of campaigns against “gender ideology” in Europe, leading to the emergence of a specific family of mobilizations that we call anti-gender campaigns. These campaigns, started in the mid-1990s as a Catholic project in reaction to the results of the UN conferences of Cairo and Bejing, but developed significantly in several European countries after crucial encounters with right-wing populism. While recognizing the importance of these crossovers, we contend the interpretation that mobilizations against “gender ideology” and right-wing populism are the two faces of the same coin, and we plead for a more complex understanding of the ways in which distinct—and sometimes competing—projects can converge in specific settings. We argue that research on the “Global Right Wing” should therefore disentangle the various components of this phenomenon, and locate them in concrete settings. We show that this research strategy allows us to better grasp the specificities of each project and the ways in which they interact. Opening our eyes on crucial developments in contemporary Europe, this strategy also prevents researchers from falling into the trap of a global and unqualified backlash against everything achieved in terms of gender and sexuality in the last decades

Phenomenon · Populism · Right wing · Gender Politics and Representation · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Religion and Society Interactions