Gender and Radical Right-Wing Populism: Ideological Variations Across Parties and Time

Radical right-wing populist parties have been on the rise in Western Europe for several decades. They have gained parliamentary representation in eleven West European countries and have assumed office or supported minority governments in half of these countries. The past decade West European radical right-wing populist parties have increasingly integrated gender issues in their party programmes, especially by focusing on issues like female genital mutilation and the headscarf to justify their anti-immigration programmes. In response feminist activists have accused radical right-wing populist parties of addressing gender only for nationalist purposes. 

West European radical right-wing populist parties, however, are ideologically diverse and can be classified as neo-liberal or nationalist. Ideological differences manifest themselves in the distinct emphasis placed on authoritarianism, conservatism, liberalism and nativism. The central question of this paper is how such ideological differences shape populist parties’ ideas about ‘classical’ gender issues (e.g. division between labour and care) on the one hand and how ideological differences are reflected in the 'newer' issues gender and immigration and gender and islam on the other hand. Drawing on a qualitative content analysis of the party programmes we compare the gender ideology and the concrete policy proposals made by neo-liberal and national populist parties in Flanders and the Netherlands from the 1980s to the present. We find that some parties adhere to a modern or modern-traditional view, while others espouse neo-traditional views. Moreover, some radical right-wing populist parties have adopted a gendered reading of immigration and Islam issues, whereas others have not. Diversity in ideas on 'classical' gender issues can be explained by parties' different ideological roots, whereas gendered views on immigration and the islam are influenced by contextual factors. These findings suggest that existing feminist as well as mainstream political science accounts on gender and radical right-wing populist parties have underestimated the variation of gender ideologies across parties.