Special Section: Contemporary Forms of Illiberal and Anti-feminist Mobilizations of Gender

In recent years, we have seen a growing interest in the ways in which a wide range of political actors with illiberal aims mobilize the broad and fluid concept of gender Verloo (2018). Scholars such as Agnieszka Graff and Elżbieta Korolczuk (2022) have argued that the global and expanding phenomenon of anti-gender mobilization crucially taps into collective fears related to the perceived loss of culture and identity, increasing individualism, and the erosion of (imagined) communities in a fast-paced and ever-changing world (Graff and Korolczuk 2022, 15). Ov Cristian Norocel and Ionela Băluţă (2021) use the concept of “retrogressive mobilization” (Bouvart, De Proost, and Norocel 2019, 5) to characterize anti-gender politics, which encapsulate illiberal mobilization against a range of issues and policy positions (e.g., sex education in schools, same-sex marriage, and abortion rights) by a “complicated assemblage” of actors ranging from both mainstream conservative and radical right politicians to grassroots movements and extremist actors (Norocel and Băluţă 2021, 3).

This Special Section was developed as a product from a one-day workshop in March 2021 organized by the Research Group on Populism, Anti-Gender and Democracy at the University of Stavanger, and the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo, where a group of scholars came together and presented their work exploring anti-feminist mobilization. Although the workshop captured discussions on gender-based mobilization in relation to illiberal politics across a variety of cultural contexts and platforms through the prism of various dominant understandings of gender, sexuality, masculinity, and femininity, this Special Section will focus on a smaller selection of these works and presents case studies from Norway, Turkey, Italy, India, and Brazil.

While the contributions by Eviane Leidig and Gabriel Bayarri, Hande Eslen-Ziya and Margunn Bjørnholt, and Alberta Giorgi and Enzo Loner address the multiplicity of ways in which illiberal and anti-feminist positions on gender are promoted via different actors, the article by Tevfik Murat Yildirim and Alper Tolga Bulut highlights the relevance of such gendered arguments and representations for voters’ choice for right-wing populist parties. Overall, this collection of articles illustrates how the gendered narratives of both institutional actors, such as political parties, and grassroots activists, such as social media influencers and men’s rights activists, may serve as a means of promoting illiberal politics, and hence can be viewed in relation to the broader phenomenon of retrogressive mobilization (Norocel and Băluţă 2021).

Acknowledgements

The guest editors would like to extend special thanks to Inger Skjelsbæk and Katrine Fangen for co-organizing the workshop on anti-feminist mobilization. We would also like to thank all the workshop participants for sharing their work and contributing to a very fruitful and much needed discussion on this highly relevant issue.