Gender and Religion in Populist Radical Right Activism. A Comparative Study of the Lega Nord (Italy) and the Front National (France)

Based on documentary and ethnographic data collected during a two-year project, this paper compares the strategies through which two populist radical right parties, the Front National (now Rassemblement national, France) and the Lega nord (now Lega, Italy), aim at constructing their political cause in gendered ways. The paper analyses the 'racialisation of sexism' as a strategy through which the two parties re-frame their anti-immigration discourse in terms of a struggle for women's rights; and points to the tensions inherent in their ideology - between 'modern traditional' views of gender on the one hand and, on the other, 'pseudo-feminist' arguments. Through their strategies the two parties provide their recruits with gendered sources of identification as well as with opportunities for celebrating these gendered collective identities - such as women's sub-organisations or campaigns on 'women's issues'. The paper compares the different repertoires used by the two parties to frame their political actions on ‘women’s issues’ and to target the gendered enemies of the ‘people’ (such as feminists); it does so by connecting them with national formations of gender and ethnicity and with the Italian and French regimes of integration/citizenship, of gender and of religion/secularism.