What is gender, why is an atmosphere of fear around gender equality being created, and why do right-wing populist discourses use anti-gender narratives to achieve their political goals? These are the questions discussed in online seminars during December 2024, within the framework of the UNIGEM project. The seminars were led by Dr. Jadranka Rebeka Anić, a scientific advisor from Split, and the participants were students from the partner universities of the TPO Foundation, as well as representatives of non-governmental organizations.
Although gender, sex, and gender equality have been widely discussed and significant progress has been made over the last three decades, there is considerable resistance reflected in the combined efforts of churches and religious communities, non-governmental organizations, and political parties. Dr. Anić spoke about the strategies used by anti-gender advocates to sow fear among people, using the concept of gender as an empty basket that they fill with various meanings. In this way, they argue that gender equality will destroy the human race because, for them, it is a hidden code for homosexuality. Gender is used as a glue that unites right-wing populist parties, feminists, and left-wing parties in the defense of women’s rights against the perceived threat of Islam. The female body, the body of the Muslim woman, becomes the battlefield through which these policies are refracted. They advocate for right-wing feminism, or feminism of borders. This means that, for Western women, they should be returned to the home, while Muslim women should be liberated from the burqa and hijab.
This manipulation succeeds because they use short, clear, and concise messages, leaving no room for any complex issues to be further explained or considered.
Anti-gender advocates rely on politics of fear and arrogance. For them, there are primary others, such as minority groups, and secondary others, which are the elites of the rich who support minorities in order to undermine the majority and tradition. In their rhetoric, one can see arrogance in ignorance, which is a major problem, as Dr. Anić points out, because they claim that gender ideology was created from the ashes of communism, with old left-wing Marxists and new left-wing gender ideologues waging an offensive on societies. Because of all this, some countries, like Russia, position themselves as saviors of Europe, which they claim has fallen into gay culture.
