This book presents an innovative exploration of the rise of political forces that have coalesced around the anti-gender movement, shaping strategies that advocate novel intersections of religion, politicization of gender and sexuality, and radical and populist rejuvenation of conservative ideologies. Through an extensive examination of activist discourses and mobilizations, the author offers a comprehensive political analysis of anti-gender mobilization, encompassing a multidimensional examination of religious, activist, and political opportunity structures. This study unveils three distinct facets characterizing these emerging (Catholic) movements: their relative autonomy from the Church (extra-ecclesiastical), their divergence from conventional religious frameworks (extra-Catholic), and their party-political alignment within the far-right area. The author proposes a new perspective on this burgeoning Catholic cause, contextualizing it within the transnational dynamics underscored by the existing literature. Particularly noteworthy is the scrutiny of internal reshaping within the Italian political Catholicism realm between the 1990s and the 2000s set against the backdrop of the dissolution of the Christian Democratic Party. Through the lens of the Italian landscape, this study extends its analysis to offer broader insights into the contemporary political uses of religion within democracies, along with contentious issues arising from gender and sexuality debates, transcending the confines of the Italian context. This book holds significant relevance for scholars and students engaged in gender studies, religious studies, social movements, populism, political science, political sociology, political history, and Italian studies.

This edited collection offers a transnational and comparative approach to understanding anti-gender mobilizations in Europe.

This book charts the new phase of global struggles around gender equality and sexual democracy: the ultraconservative mobilization against "gender ideology" and feminist efforts to counteract it. It argues that anti-gender campaigns, which emerged around 2010 in Europe, are not a simple continuation of the anti-feminist backlash dating back to the 1970s, but part of a new political configuration. Opposition to "gender" has become a key element of the rise of right-wing populism, which successfully harnesses the anxiety, shame and anger caused by neoliberalism and threatens to destroy liberal democracy. Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Moment offers a novel conceptualization of the relationship between the ultraconservative anti-gender movement and right-wing populist parties, examining the opportunistic synergy between these actors. The authors map the anti-gender campaigns as a global movement, putting the Polish case in a comparative perspective. They show that the anti-gender rhetoric is best understood as a reactionary critique of neoliberalism as a socio-cultural formation. The book also studies the recent wave of feminist mass mobilizations, viewing the transnational revolt of women as a left populist movement. This is an important study for those doing research in politics, cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies and sociology. It will also be useful for activists and policy makers. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com , has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This book is a systematic consideration of the link between the extreme right and the discourse about developments in regard to gender issues within different national states. The contributors analyze right-wing extremist tendencies in Europe under the specific perspective on gender. The volume brings together the few existing findings concerning the quantitative dimension of activities carried out by men and women in different countries, and illuminates and juxtaposes gender ratios along with the role of women in right-wing extremism. Along with the gender-specific access to right-wing groups, the chapters look at networks, organizational forms, specific strategies of female right-wing extremists, their ideologies (especially regarding femininity and masculinity), hetero normativity, discourses on sexuality, and preventive and counter-strategies. The book will be of use to students and scholars interested in gender and politics, European politics, and political extremism.

While research in right-wing populism has recently been blossoming, a systematic study of the intersection of right-wing populism and gender is still missing, even though gender issues are ubiquitous in discourses of the radical right ranging from »ethnosexism« against immigrants, to »anti-genderism.« This volume shows that the intersectionality of gender, race and class is constitutional for radical right discourse. From different European perspectives, the contributions investigate the ways in which gender is used as a meta-language, strategic tool and »affective bridge« for ordering and hierarchizing political objectives in the discourse of the diverse actors of the »right-wing complex.«

This open access book engages with the concept of reproductive justice by exploring case studies of struggles around abortion in the context of rising anti-genderism, religious fundamentalism, and ethno-nationalism. Based on rich qualitative data offering in-depth analyses from different geographical, political and cultural contexts, the book explores how reproductive justice is understood, contested and given meaning. Chapters further develop the Black feminist concept of reproductive justice in a critical dialogue with postcolonial theory and explore the strength of transnational feminist practices. This book thus offers a fresh approach to the issue of abortion by engaging with contemporary political and cultural processes, and it expands the narrow notions of women’s rights, particularly notions of property rights over bodies, towards an analysis of the political economy of social reproduction and how it affects bodies that can be pregnant. This volume will be of interest to scholars with interests in reproductive justice, anti-gender politics, and religious fundamentalism.

In May 2004, after bringing their legislation into accordance with EU regulations, ten more countries joined the European Union. The contributors to this volume assess the impact of this historical development on gender relations in the new and old EU member states. Instead of focusing on either western or eastern Europe, this book investigates the similarities and differences in diverse parts of Europe. Although initially limited, gender equality was part of the original framework of the European Union, an organization often more open than national governments to feminist demands, as this volume illustrates with case studies from eastern and western Europe. The enlargement process thus provides some important policy instruments for increasing equality between men and women.