Exploring Gender Differences in Support for Rightist Parties: The Role of Party and Gender Ideology

Abstract

This contribution to the Special Issue on Gender and Conservatism uses expert and election surveys to explore the extent to which the feminist or traditional gender ideology of parties of the right relates to their economic and liberal/authoritarian ideology. We show that although parties of the left generally espouse more feminist ideologies than parties of the right, there are a significant number of rightist parties in Western Europe that combine laissez-faire economic values with liberal feminist ideals. That said, there is more homogeneity among parties of the populist radical right than rightist parties more generally. We find that despite some variation in their gender ideology, parties of the populist radical right overwhelmingly—with the exception of one party in the Netherlands—continue to adopt traditional or antifeminist gender ideologies. In terms of attracting women voters, we find that rightist parties who adopt a feminist gender ideology are able to attract more women voters than other parties of the right. We detect several examples of center-right parties that include feminist elements in their gender ideologies and are able to win over larger proportions of women voters than rightist parties that fail to adopt feminist positions.

Not So Radical After All: Ideological Diversity Among Radical Right Supporters and Its Implications

“…A burgeoning literature on radical right parties and voters has begun to examine an increasingly prevalent and perplexing phenomenon: parties’ and voters’ abandonment of traditionalism, particularly with regard to gender and sexuality (Akkerman, 2005, 2015; Akkerman and Hagelund, 2007; Campbell and Erzeel, 2018; De Lange and Mügge, 2015; Meret and Siim, 2013; Spierings and Zaslove, 2015a, 2015b; Spierings et al, 2017). This stands in contrast to value-based accounts of the party family’s rise, which posited that the radical right party family was a reaction to postmaterialism (see Inglehart, 1997).…”

“…This is corroborated by the study of party manifestos and other documents by Meret and Siim (2013), Akkerman (2015), De Lange and Mügge (2015), and Mudde and Kaltwasser (2015), who find that several radical right parties tend to take progressive stances on gender and sexuality. An expert survey of party gender ideologies in 15 countries finds that the two most “liberal” radical right parties in this regard are the Dutch PVV and the Sweden Democrats (SD) (Campbell and Erzeel, 2018). These parties tend to draw a link between their progressive social values on gender and LGBT rights and their nativist nationalism: “gender equality as part of a hegemonic national culture that is under threat from the cultural ‘other’” (Meret and Siim, 2013).…”

“…Radical right parties formed, seeking to arrest this rapid sociopolitical change, and they were primarily supported by working-class men with conservative attitudes toward gender and sexuality, authoritarian tendencies, and strong nativism (Bornschier, 2018). Yet in the past 10–15 years, a puzzling and increasingly prevalent phenomenon has appeared among the West European radical right—some parties are softening their traditionalist positions on issues of gender, sexuality, and the family (Akkerman, 2005; Akkerman, 2015; Akkerman and Hagelund, 2007; Campbell and Erzeel, 2018; De Lange and Mügge, 2015; Meret and Siim, 2013; Spierings and Zaslove, 2015a). Are radical right supporters also moderating?…”

The Baskerville's dog suddenly started barking: voting for VOX in the 2019 Spanish general elections

“…It is well established that these parties are considerably less liberal in the domain of family relations (Akkerman 2015) and defend more traditional gender roles (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2015) than their non-radical counter-parts (and a fortiore, than left-wing parties). Whether these positions curtail (Campbell and Erzeel 2018) or not (Immerzeel, Coffé, and van der Lippe 2015) support among women, and irrespectively of the role played by political socialization (Spierings and Zaslove 2017), socioeconomic positions and other factors, the fact is that a gender gap in the voting constituents of the populist radical right is recurrently found: men have a higher propensity to vote for the far right than women (Harteveld et al 2015;Spierings and Zaslove 2015;Stockemer, Lentz, and Mayer 2018). Research also tends to disclose a metropolitan versus rural cleavage in the success of radical right-wing parties, with stronger support in rural settings (De Lange and Rooduijn 2015; Fitzgerald 2018), and education, also, tends to be negatively associated with voting for the radical right (Van Hauwaert and Van Kessel 2018).…”

Sell-Outs or Warriors for Change? A Comparative Look at Rightist, Political Women in Democracies

“…So far, many of these studies are single-case studies such as the Christian Democratic Party in Germany Wiliarty 2010), the Republican Party in the United States (Crowder-Meyer and Cooperman 2018; Kitchens and Swers 2016;Och and Shames 2018), or the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom (Annesley and Gains 2014;Childs and Webb 2012;Childs, Webb, and Marthaler 2009). Comparative studies looking across countries are relatively rare; those that exist typically compare rightist parties across one region only or across one specific party family (Campbell and Erzeel 2018;Celis and Erzeel 2015;Erzeel and Celis 2016).…”