Feminism contested and co-opted: Women,agency and politics of gender in the Greek and Greek-Cypriot far right

Abstract

The literature on the gender dimension of far-right politics has established the constitutive role of gender and women’s involvement in the far right. However, knowledge about how far-right women negotiate and condition their agency within their parties and how they relate to gender, gender equality and feminism remains limited. This article builds on literature on conservative and far-right women’s agency, and on feminism’s employment by the far right. Based on interviews with female politicians and seasoned activists of the Greek Golden Dawn and the Greek-Cypriot National Popular Front, it examines how highly engaged far-right women construct their political agency at the intersections of often contradictory discourses and how, in doing so, they impact understandings of gender, gender equality and feminism. The analysis of the interview material identifies three different formulations of political agency the participants refer to: radical motherhood; female political militancy/political militant femininity and troubling of far-right gender roles. I argue that these different formulations of political agency show how, by using elements of feminism, far-right women construct flexible and versatile far-right gender discourses, which challenge gender essentialist positions that their parties convey. Moreover, they challenge delineations of far-right women’s political agency based on the compliance/(feminist) resistance dichotomy and expose the processes through which far-right women contest feminism by drawing on it. The article further argues that these formulations of political agency and far-right gender discourses may contribute to the far right’s appeal among women with diverse views on gender, gender equality, feminism and politics, as they may respond to an array of interests and demands that can be made from many different positions. Therefore, beyond contributing to discussions about the role of women, gender and feminism in far-right politics, the article demonstrates the importance of studying far-right women’s views for gaining a well-rounded understanding of this issue.

Introduction

The literature on the gender dimension of far-right politics has established the constitutive role of gender and women’s involvement in the far right (Arfini et al., 2019; Askola, 2019; Stasulane, 2017). It has also pointed to remaining gaps in knowledge that include how far-right women negotiate and condition their agency within their parties, and how they relate to gender, gender equality and feminism (Mulinari and Neergaard, 2014; Pettersson, 2017). This literature has argued that studying far-right women’s views is essential for a nuanced understanding of these issues, thus highlighting the importance of feminist empirical research about far-right women (Avanza, 2020; Schreiber, 2018).

This article takes up these issues and examines how highly engaged far-right women construct their political agency at the intersections of often contradictory discourses and how, in doing so, they potentially impact understandings of gender, gender equality and feminism. ¹ The guiding questions that are explored in the article are: (1) How do far-right women understand themselves as political agents within their parties? (2) How do they construct their notions of gender and women’s political agency? and (3) How does the political agency of far-right women relate to, and potentially affect, conceptualisations of women’s political agency, gender, gender equality and feminism? ² The analysis is based on interviews with 13 female politicians and seasoned activists of two political parties: the Greek Golden Dawn (GD) and the Greek-Cypriot National Popular Front (ELAM). Theoretically, the article engages with analyses of conservative and far-right women’s agency that move beyond dichotomic (compliance/(feminist) resistance) understandings of women’s political agency, and with discussions about the far right’s employment of feminist ideas.

The empirical material enables a nuanced discussion of how the far right does not always simply reject feminism but may strategically use it to advance its political agenda. An in-depth qualitative analysis of the interviews identifies three different formulations of political agency the participants refer to: radical motherhood; female political militancy/political militant femininity; and troubling of far-right gender roles. I argue that these different formulations show how, by using elements of feminism, far-right women construct flexible and versatile understandings of gender, gender equality and feminism which, to an extent, challenge the gender essentialist positions that their parties convey. Moreover, they challenge interpretations of far-right women’s political agency based on the compliance/(feminist) resistance dichotomy and expose the processes through which far-right women contest feminism by drawing on some of feminism’s central tenets. The article further argues that these understandings and formulations of political agency may contribute to the far right’s appeal among women with diverse views on gender, gender equality, feminism and politics, as they may respond to an array of interests and demands that can be made from many different positions.

I first outline previous work on conservative and far-right women’s agency and briefly present discussions about how the far right employs feminism, and explore the content of far-right women’s agency and the ways in which it is negotiated and conditioned by the far right, employing feminist ideas. Then, I provide an overview of women and gender in GD and ELAM. Next, I describe the research methods before presenting the analysis of the interview material. I conclude with a summary of the article’s findings and implications, and suggest avenues for future research.

Women, gender and the far right

The interpretation of women’s political agency as agency that aims to dismantle patriarchal structures and unequal gender power relations frames women’s political agency as based on a compliance/(feminist) resistance dichotomy and leads to the dismissal of the idea that conservative and far-right women exercise political agency (Avanza, 2020; Bracke, 2003; Davids, 2011). The dearth of feminist research on far-right women partly accounts for this. The reciprocal suspicion between feminist scholars and far-right parties, and the accessibility difficulties that this exacerbates have hindered the empirical exploration of the multiple nuances and dynamics of the women-gender–far-right relationship (Askola, 2019; Blee and Deutsch, 2012). There is now broader consensus that these nuances and dynamics need to be considered from far-right women’s perspectives to fully grasp the far-right’s impact on conceptualisations of women’s political agency, gender, gender equality and feminism. This has enabled empirical research that transcends the dichotomous framing of women’s political agency as either compliance or (feminist) resistance and produces knowledge about far-right women’s perspectives and agency that is based on such women’s accounts (Arfini et al., 2019; Mulinari and Neergaard, 2014; Pettersson, 2017).

In this vein, this article distances itself both from understandings of agency that are premised on (neo)liberal conceptions of the subject as autonomous, rational and bestowed with individual choice (ignoring how structural factors impact a subject’s ability to act), and from positions that – viewing power relations and structures as pervasive and insurmountable – relegate agency to an outcome of false consciousness and deny the possibility of agency to ‘other’ women (Bracke, 2003; Duits and Van Zoonen, 2007; Gill, 2007). The article concurs with Davids (2011: 166) that a definition of agency should be premised on acknowledging the voices of ‘“other women” . . . in representing fragmented choices, partial interests and subversions which are always and inevitably contaminated by compliance’. Such an understanding of agency also allows more focus on what far-right women’s political agency does, than on what it is (Chapman, 2016). Establishing that far-right women have agency is perhaps less important than the content of this agency and the ways in which it relates to, and potentially impacts, understandings of gender, gender equality and feminism. Delving deeper into such questions requires consideration of how feminism is used by the far right and the challenges this creates for feminism and pluralist democracy.

Research has shown that the conservative right and the far right use feminism’s gains and some of its ideological repertoire in the service of exclusionary campaigns, through which conservative- and far-right women establish themselves in politics. ³ In some parts of Europe, the conservative right and the far right’s gender regimes are gradually being saturated by an anti-Islam rhetoric that explicitly appeals to feminist values (Askola, 2019; Fekete, 2006; Mulinari and Neergaard, 2014; Pettersson, 2017; Sprengholz, 2021). For example, examining France, Italy and the Netherlands, Farris (2017) describes conservative female actors’ use of feminist ideas and gender equality themes in anti-Islam and anti-immigration campaigns. By using the tropes of feminism – for example, freedom from male violence and freedom of dress – and the themes of gender equality, they portray Muslim men as oppressors of non-western immigrant women, while they present themselves as immigrant women’s saviours. In this way, far-right and conservative-right female politicians establish themselves in politics, while promoting right-wing nationalist parties’ agendas. Studying Latvia, Stasulane (2017) shows how feminism’s achievements, like women’s increased participation in sociopolitical developments and financial independence have facilitated and are reflected in, women’s increased and active involvement in the Latvian National Front (LNF). This has changed traditional gender roles in the party and has enabled some women to establish themselves as important political agents within the LNF. Examining discourses on women’s emancipation by right-wing female members of parliament in Italy, Arfini et al. (2019) argue that by selectively using feminism’s language and achievements, these women propose an ‘emancipatory complementarism’; that is, a mix of liberal and conservative notions that does not aim to challenge the structural basis of inequality, but to maintain the hierarchical organisation of society and redefine the meanings of feminism. In a process that has been described as ‘the righting of feminism’ (Schreiber, 2008), ‘the feminist project has . . . increasingly been linked with non-emancipatory agendas, such as neoliberal and xenophobic politics’ (Farris and Rottenberg, 2017: 6).

Many feminist scholars concur that neoliberalism and populism have given rise to anti-intersectional and exclusionary versions of feminism; namely, neoliberal feminism (Rottenberg, 2014) and femonationalism (Farris, 2017) that are often mutually reinforcing, converge or work in tandem in attempts to undermine feminism, through the use of references to gender and gender equality. This raises concerns about feminism’s individualisation and nationalisation, and about gender and gender issues’ depoliticisation and repoliticisation through their decoupling from feminism as a theoretical and political project concerned with intersectional, structural and institutional inequalities (Dietze, 2022; Elomäki and Kantola, 2018; Gunnarsson Payne and Tornhill, 2021; Petzen, 2012; Sprengholz, 2021). As Gunnarsson Payne and Tornhill (2021: 4) explain, contemporary feminism is faced with a ‘double-bind’, since ‘neoliberal policy, market solutions and socioeconomic inequalities have paved the way for the authoritarian turn on which anti-gender politics itself thrives’.

The issues of whether, to what extent and which types of feminism are responsible for this ‘double-bind’; what the appropriate term to describe the phenomenon is (e.g. ‘cooptation’, ‘instrumentalisation’, ‘convergence’ etc.); and whether and how feminism could rebound have generated a body of feminist scholarship. ⁴ However, a full consideration of that literature is beyond the scope of this article. What is important for the purposes of this article is that the literature offers ample evidence that, in Europe and elsewhere, gender has become one of the central axes around which the transformation of the far right is taking place, and that the far right has risen to power often through strategically employing gender, sexual orientation and gender identity equality discourses and policies (Ahrens et al., 2018; Akkerman, 2015; Farris, 2017; Sprengholz, 2021; Stasulane, 2017; Verloo and Paternotte, 2018). Not all rightist parties adopt the same positions on gender and gender equality, as national political context particularities influence their choices (Akkerman, 2015; Askola, 2019; Sauer et al., 2017). However, what they have in common is the ability to maintain ‘a double and contradictory position’ (Donà, 2020) on gender equality through what Sauer et al. (2017) call an ‘exclusive intersectionality’ and what Dietze (2022) calls ‘strategic progressivism’; namely, they simultaneously support gender equality for (national) women in the context of opposing Muslim immigration and propel conservative family policies, and limit (national) women’s rights in the context of acting as the saviours of the national community’s ‘authentic’ way of life (Donà, 2020). This extends to the transnational level, since rightist parties have managed to form alliances to influence policymaking at the European level (Ahrens et al., 2018; Cullen, 2020; Paternotte and Kuhar, 2018; Verloo and Paternotte, 2018).

Conservative and far-right women politicians play a central role in this process. As Farris and Rottenberg (2017) argue, while not asserted as feminist, ‘we are currently witnessing an enfolding of feminist themes into movements and rationalities that appear antithetical to such themes’ (p. 12). Agency is a crucial frame for understanding how actors enact their politics and what the potential impact of that politics is. Therefore, the question of far-right women’s political agency and of their perspectives on, and uses of, gender, gender equality and feminism, goes to the heart of a major challenge that contemporary feminism and pluralist democracy face (Arfini et al., 2019; Sprengholz, 2021; Stasulane, 2017).

Women and gender in GD and ELAM

GD is a Greek far-right movement-party founded in 1983. Due to a combination of factors that include austerity, failed migration and asylum policies and nationalism’s prevalence, GD achieved sudden electoral success in 2012, which it maintained until 2019, despite many of its politicians and seasoned activists being arrested for committing or being involved in violent crimes in 2013. Jus sanguinis nationalism takes centre-stage in GD’s ideology, while its political project could be summarised as establishing a nationalist state and creating a ‘pure’ society based on racial inequality and the expulsion of any ‘Other’ who threatens the actualisation of GD’s political project (Ellinas, 2013). GD dissolved, at least officially in October 2020, as nearly its entire leadership was imprisoned for operating a criminal gang of hit squads under the guise of being a political party. Nonetheless, GD remains a compelling case study through which to examine far-right women’s political agency and perceptions. As is usually the case with far-right parties, GD is relatively underrepresented among women voters. However, pertinent literature has considered GD’s successful extension of its local organisational network, its strong militant grassroots activism and its success at recruiting women in comparison to similar parties, both in Greece and elsewhere in Europe (Blee, 2017; Ellinas, 2013). ⁵

ELAM was founded in 2008 as GD’s branch in Cyprus, even though it had to cut ties after GD leadership’s imprisonment. ELAM achieved swift and increasing electoral support. It won seats the second time it participated in the parliamentary elections, in 2016. In 2021, ELAM doubled its vote share and ranked fourth in the voters’ preferences. ⁶ Contrary to Greece, in Cyprus, the economic crisis did not alter the main party political dynamics or engender major populist narratives. However, a developing fragmentation of the party system that was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and revelations of corruption in the government’s passport-for-investment scheme, facilitated the increase in ELAM’s vote share. Ethnonationalism is central to ELAM’s ideology, as a party that presents itself as the defender of Greek identity in Cyprus against uncontrolled immigration and Turkey. However, because of party political system and political culture differences between the two countries and GD’s dissolution, ELAM was forced to tone down its affinity with GD (Ellinas and Katsourides, 2021). Having been described as GD’s sister party (Katsourides, 2013), yet operating in a different but comparable context, ELAM offers a more complex exploration of the topic under examination.

In relation to the parties’ positions on gender and feminism, as these are reflected in party material, GD arguably promoted traditional values to women; identifying motherhood as determinative of women’s lives and the private sphere as their domain; defining gender as ‘biologically defined sex’; equating gender equality with ‘gender complementarity’; linking gender equality to national women’s rights to advance anti-Islam and anti-immigrant agendas; and disparaging feminism as a project linked to the political left and the ‘new world order’ that threatens the national community (Félix, 2015; Koronaiou and Sakellariou, 2017). Similar arguments have been made about ELAM also (Baider, 2017), even though, for the reasons explained above, ELAM’s rhetoric is subdued in comparison to GD’s. ⁷ While these readings are correct, literature identifies more discrepancies than similarities between in-house and externally communicated far-right (gender) discourses, and between party official and GD and ELAM activists’ understandings of gender and women’s role in the far right (Akkerman, 2015; Blee, 2002; Blee and Deutsch, 2012). This article’s analysis of interviews with women politicians from GD and ELAM shows that rules that are less fixed and gender-essentialising than those assumed by analysing only party material, guide far-right women’s understandings and political action.

Methods

I conducted in-person interviews with six GD and seven ELAM women politicians and seasoned activists in July 2013 and from April to August 2017, respectively. This was good timing for these interviews as GD and ELAM won seats in parliament for the first time in 2012 and 2016, respectively. This, combined with their increased media presence at that time, facilitated access and lessened safety concerns. The literature has registered access and participant recruitment difficulties in direct research with far-right groups, and increased safety and post-publication backlash considerations, when this research is conducted by female feminist researchers (Blee, 2002; Yelin and Clancy, 2021). Maintaining access to GD became impossible after the arrests in September 2013, including of one of the women I had interviewed. Maintaining access to ELAM became difficult given the developments in GD’s trial and ELAM’s attempts to dissociate itself from GD. Although the interviews were conducted some years ago, they continue to be a rare, valuable and suitable source of data for studying the issues of women, gender and feminism’s role in far-right politics that remains central in a number of European countries, as emphasised in the literature discussed in this article.

Examining both women and men’s views would have provided an important gender comparative perspective. However, given the fragility of access and the prioritisation of men’s views in mainstream far-right literature, I prioritised interviews with women and their perspectives as a way of counteracting their exclusion from, and invisibility in, examinations of the far right (Fekete, 2006; Mulinari and Neergaard, 2014; Schreiber, 2018). I used the snowball recruiting method that is useful when attempting to recruit participants with influential positions within closed and secretive groups. This method facilitated rapport during the interviews, as referrals made by acquaintances helped develop trust (Atkinson and Flint, 2001). Nevertheless, interacting with interviewees whose political orientation strongly differs from mine raised challenges. Based on Blee’s (2002) example, to balance rapport and distance, I would share some concerns mentioned by interviewees – for example, backpain problems and lack of free time – and remain emotionally unresponsive but probe into derogatory comments against minorities. Abiding by the principles of reflexivity, when asked, I was honest about my commitment to feminism and intersectional social justice and about not being a GD or ELAM supporter. Moreover, I reassured participants that, despite my positionality, I would uphold the ethical principles associated with undertaking empirical research, and not misrepresent them in my work. Following Bellè’s (2016) example, I remained aware that my positioning as a feminist researcher impacts the design, execution and theoretical positioning of my study. However, this was not an obstacle, but a resource for the research. As Bellè (2016: 21) puts it, ‘my irreducible distance [from the research participants] . . . prompted me to . . . want to understand . . . [It] was not an accident, but the real crux of the research’. Therefore, while not pretending to be standing above my topic of study, I remained open to interviewees’ expressing their opinions, since understanding them did not necessitate espousing their beliefs.

The interviews lasted between 1 and 3 hours and covered paths to party involvement; experiences in the party; relations between party men and women; and attitudes towards gender, gender equality and feminism. To identify interview themes, using keywords, ⁸ I searched the parties’ websites and blogs for articles. ⁹ I also used this information at the analysis and interpretation stage to check for discrepancies and similarities between official party positions and participants’ understandings of gender, gender equality, feminism and women’s role in the far right. I analysed transcripts of the interviews to identify key themes and recurrent ideas and used thematic narrative analysis to capture how participants define and construct their experiences and understandings, as appropriate in research that aims to include participants’ voices without presuming uniformity in their approaches (Riessman, 2008). ¹⁰

Far-right women’s perspectives and political agency

The three different formulations of political agency that emerged and dominated in the interviews – radical motherhood, female political militancy/political militant femininity and troubling of far-right gender roles – constitute participants’ attempts to justify their political agency by deflecting from their movement-parties’ positions to a considerable extent, and by drawing on feminism’s ideas. This is important because it indicates the flexibility and versatility of far-right gender discourses and far-right women’s role in (re)constructing them. I discuss each of these formulations of far-right women’s political agency in turn.

Radical motherhood

Radical motherhood refers to the adoption of an active role produced by women’s traditional self-perceptions without challenging male dominance, which serves as a basis for inclusion in activist communities. Conservative and far-right women often strategically employ radical motherhood to justify their political agency (Jetter et al., 1997; Schreiber, 2008). As others have noted (Baider, 2017; Félix, 2015; Koronaiou and Sakellariou, 2017), motherhood is a prominent theme in GD and ELAM’s externally communicated gender discourse. However, drawing on the tropes of feminism, participants offered alternative understandings of radical motherhood, thus adding to the flexibility and versatility of their movement-parties’ gender discourses. The following indicative excerpt from an interview with an ELAM woman politician substantiates the argument:

I’m a single parent . . . People think that not having a father around is a very important thing. However, . . . children grow up better when men are absent . . . I’m a person who studies, listens to opinions, reads to be informed . . . Because when one has children, one needs to prioritise their [children’s] well-being. (KK, 40s, single, two children, high school graduate)

As Mohanty (1988) argues, ‘that women mother . . . is not as significant as the value attached to mothering’ (p. 68). In discussing motherhood, participants often deviated from their parties’ gender complementarity position and challenged male dominance by challenging the centrality of men in women/mothers and children’s lives. Contrary to far-right gender discourses (Fangen and Lichtenberg, 2021), motherhood is not legitimised through the invocation of the heteronormative nuclear family unit but is based instead on women’s parenting skills. Therefore, to an extent, this approach employs feminist arguments that point to patriarchy’s role in the construction of socially legitimised and delegitimised forms of motherhood and to the implication of patriarchal institutions, like heterosexual marriage and the traditional nuclear family, in the construction of gender as difference (Rich, 1977). This is an expansion of motherhood’s meaning in far-right women’s gender discourses ‘from an essentialist and biological notion to a moral and political one’ (Davids, 2011: 163).

As already mentioned, other research has shown that the far right strategically employs feminist language to mainstream itself and increase its appeal, legitimise its anti-immigrant and other discriminatory rhetoric and policy proposals and disparage feminism. Some interviewees expressed ideas drawing on feminism, yet from an anti-feminist standpoint, thus substantiating the finding. One GD woman politician who was highly active in the GD Women’s Front (GDWF) explained,

The Greek woman should not see motherhood as sacrifice . . . As a mother-educator she should be on the highest pedestal of society . . . There is greater value in a woman having a family, rather than her . . . chasing a career. (CC, 30s, married, two children, university graduate)

In a similar vein, a woman highly active in a GDWF sector in a large regional unit commented:

We [i.e., GD] don’t want women to stay at home and take care of the children . . . but we are against feminism that says a woman must focus on her career. (MM, 30s, single, no children, high school graduate)

The prioritisation of caring over the pursuit of career partly replicates feminist critiques of neoliberal capitalism as competitive and destructive to women and men’s lives, but from an anti-feminist, nationalist standpoint, which ignores structural, institutional and intersectional discrimination against women (Gunnarsson Payne and Tornhill, 2021; Sprengholz, 2021). This speaks to literature on care racism – that is, caring ‘for our own’ and for the suppressed backward ‘others’ by disciplining them into ‘our own’ gender and sexual ‘culture’ – and on femonationalism – that is, feminisms that reinforce notions of exclusionary ethnonationalist communities (Elomäki and Kantola, 2018; Farris, 2017; Gunnarsson Payne and Tornhill, 2021; Mulinari and Neergaard, 2014; Petzen, 2012; Sprengholz, 2021). Care racism and femonationalism find fertile ground in places like Greece and Cyprus, heavily affected by austerity and failed migration and asylum policies, where nationalism and traditional perceptions of gender are prevalent (Cullen, 2020; Danopoulos, 2017; Gunnarsson Payne and Tornhill, 2021; Kamenou, 2019, 2020).

These alternative definitions of radical motherhood indicate the decentring of motherhood-as-biology within GD and ELAM’s gender discourses, which party women (re)construct and disseminate, and highlight their flexibility. This flexibility does not amount to motherhood’s displacement from far-right gender discourses nor to unrestricted gendered roles and positions. However, it points to a degree of space within which far-right women may form their identities as political agents in ways that escape the rigid essentialisms and biologisms associated with the far right.

Female political militancy/political militant femininity

Femininity is a common theme in articles on GD and ELAM’s websites and blogs, where it is delineated based on gender complementarity (Baider, 2017; Félix, 2015; Koronaiou and Sakellariou, 2017). However, being attentive to femininity’s multiplicity as a gender role, gender presentation and embodiment allows a more nuanced reading of its operation (McCann, 2017). The following excerpt from an interview with a high-rank ELAM woman politician is indicative of the ways in which far-right women assume agency by deviating from their parties’ position on femininity, through the employment of feminist ideas:

What we [ELAM women] care about is . . . that we gain supporters and people finally realise what ELAM is and represents . . . It doesn’t make a difference if one is a man or a woman . . . Besides bodily differences . . . I don’t think we differ in anything . . . Not all women will get married . . . there are women who don’t want to have children. (PP, 40s, single, 1 child, university graduate)

Departing from gender complementarity and essentialised understandings of femininity and gender relations, participants often identified far-right women as political agents who challenge androcentric and patriarchal perceptions about women’s ‘nature-prescribed’ and socially sanctioned roles. This is a manifestation of female political militancy – with the term being conventionally defined as being militant in pursuing a political goal – in that it simultaneously challenges militancy as an element of an exclusively male domain, and is directed towards the fulfilment of the far-right political project.

However, although this constitutes an attempt to challenge perceptions of gender roles within the far right, it falls short of escaping their confines: Far-right women who defy their roles as mothers and wives can only do so in the name of the far right’s militant project, which stems from androcentric, patriarchal and masculinist perceptions about how power should be distributed for the far-right project’s actualisation (Arfini et al., 2019; Paternotte and Kuhar, 2018). Nevertheless, this interpretation of women’s political agency by far-right women is exemplary of a flexible and versatile discourse of female political militancy as a form of political agency that employs feminist ideas. For example, in line with (neo)liberal feminism, women’s participation in the political sphere based on their abilities and men and women’s sameness are emphasised (Rottenberg, 2014). This substantiates the argument made by others that neoliberal feminism and femonationalism often work in tandem in the far right’s attempts to undermine feminism and present its own policies as the only way for the unproblematic organisation of the ethnonational community’s sociopolitical relations by denying structural, institutional and intersectional inequalities, and by distinguishing equal rights from equal status (Dietze, 2022; Elomäki and Kantola, 2018; Gunnarsson Payne and Tornhill, 2021; Petzen, 2012; Sprengholz, 2021).

Describing feminism as sectarian and perilous for collective political consciousness and action (Arfini et al., 2019) – and since far-right ideology necessitates prioritising the far-right project over the individual – far-right women reject feminism, although they use its language to name their claims against it. This enables far-right women to concomitantly (re)construct far-right gender discourses and present them as the only alternative to ‘dangerous’ interpretations of gender and gender equality. The (re)constructed far-right gender discourses may appeal to women with diverse views on gender, gender equality, feminism and politics, as they may respond to an array of interests and demands that can be made from many different positions (Petzen, 2012; Sprengholz, 2021). This is particularly the case in times of economic crises and democratic decline that facilitate gender conservatism’s rise and attempts to present it as the solution to concomitant material problems and cultural anxieties. These attempts are often successful as, contrary to anti-racist and intersectional approaches to gender and gender equality, the far right has the ability to promote contradictory positions and get away with them (Cullen, 2020; Dietze, 2022; Gunnarsson Payne and Tornhill, 2021; Sauer et al., 2017).

The following comment on women’s role in GD’s political project is indicative and corroborates the argument:

Men and women can do exactly the same things . . . Feminists are those who inferiorise women by not wanting us to be different from men . . . We don’t want women to be dressing like commandoes . . . The androgynous style is something I see a lot lately and it troubles me a lot. (MM)

Participants articulated a form of female political militancy that I call ‘political militant femininity’, which stresses the importance of specific manifestations of gender in the way political actors exercise their political agency – that is, a gender-based rather than a sex-based performance of militancy. Namely, participants distinguished between female militancy, understood as militancy by women, and militant femininity, understood as a gender-based rather than as a sex-based performance of militancy. For example, this participant sees GD women as members of a family of fighters in which one’s sex does not assign them a primary or secondary role in the fight, and attributes women’s inferiorisation not to men or to GD’s positions on women, gender and gender equality, but to feminism. Other participants also interpreted and (re)constructed their party’s gender discourse as one that does not distinguish between ‘female’ and ‘male’ modes of political agency but that, nevertheless, necessitates the preservation of specific bifurcated gendered modalities in its manifestation. This constitutes another attempt by far-right women to challenge perceptions of gender roles within the far right. However, this distinction between sex and gender remains embedded in the sex/gender binary and in its naturalisation that ground traditional gender roles and exclusions (Butler, 1990, 1993) not least within the far right. Nonetheless, in this way, far-right women embody a dominant femininity that does not merely serve to legitimise themselves in a male-dominated party, or simply replicates or complements conceptions of dominant masculinity. Through a nationalist nostalgia that imagines a pre-feminism state of unproblematic gender relations, it is presented as the authentic, unadulterated femininity that feminism threatens, thus endangering women, gender relations and social stability (Pettersson, 2017; Sprengholz, 2021). Stressing the importance of ‘femininity’ at the rhetorical level while transgressing the ‘natural’ borders of their gender – as these are prescribed by their parties – in practice, far-right women create a gender flexibility that may be attractive in contexts like Greece and Cyprus, where the domain of politics continues to be men’s preserve and a symbol of masculinity (Danopoulos, 2017; Kamenou, 2019, 2020).

ELAM women’s approaches to feminism were notably different. As an ELAM seasoned activist stated, ‘there are some things about feminism that might be good . . . I can’t say I’m either pro or against [feminism]’ (ZZ, 20s, single, no children, university graduate). Context specificities partly explain this. In Greece, the central role feminists played in the resistance against the right-wing military dictatorship from 1967 to 1974 facilitated feminism’s association with the political left (Stamiris, 1986). Therefore, common understandings of feminism as a leftist project may explain GD women’s aversion towards it. In Cyprus, the legacies of colonialism and ethnonational conflict stalled the development of a feminist movement, while political parties’ prioritisation of the national problem over gender, sexuality and intersectional justice issues has prohibited feminism’s association with either the political left or right (Kamenou, 2019, 2020) This, combined with ELAM’s attempts to mainstream itself, may partly explain ELAM participants’ position on feminism and ELAM supporting the election of the first female and youngest-ever Speaker of the Republic of Cyprus House of Representatives – Annita Demetriou, a politician of the governing conservative neoliberal party who supports women’s and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex rights – in 2021. ¹¹ This was an instance of the far right employing gender (support for a woman) as a tool to forge political alliances or draw borders (Dietze, 2022: 283).

ELAM’s aforementioned political move shows that unless feminism is grounded in a critical intersectional tradition, its language and achievements can be employed by anti-feminist forces that may use them to erase gender as a relational category linked to power and construct exclusionary versions of feminism (Elomäki and Kantola, 2018; Gunnarsson Payne and Tornhill, 2021; Petzen, 2012). The following excerpt from an interview with an ELAM woman politician supports the argument:

Interviewee:

I consider feminism to be useless because, nowadays, there is [gender] equality.

Interviewer:

But in Cyprus the gender pension gap is 40 per cent.

Interviewee:

I know. We still need work on the [gender] equality issue.

Interviewer:

So, do we need feminism?

Interviewee:

This isn’t an issue of feminism. It’s an issue of justice for the Greek-Cypriot citizens. (EE, 20s, single, no children, university graduate)

By employing a postfeminist narrative (Sprengholz, 2021), the interviewee rejects feminism as ‘useless’, claiming that gender equality has been achieved. When presented with a concrete example of gender inequality, she claims that gender equality is not an issue of feminism, but one of exclusionary ethnonationalist ‘social justice’. This corroborates the findings of previous research. Far-right women politicians elsewhere in Europe – for example, in Italy, Finland, Sweden and Germany – also claim that gender equality has been accomplished to counter feminist efforts towards intersectional and inclusive equality, while simultaneously avoiding drawing explicitly on patriarchal discourses that would alienate other conservative women (Arfini et al., 2019; Askola, 2019; Mulinari and Neergaard, 2014; Pettersson, 2017; Sprengholz, 2021).

Troubling far-right gender roles

Another formulation of political agency was based on participants troubling gender roles within their parties, as these are prescribed in party documents. For example, as a woman in the GD congress – the highest party organ – explained, ‘I have been [politically active] in GD long before I married [my husband]. ¹² He did not bring me along to GD’ (AA, 40s, married, no children, university graduate). As an ELAM participant stated, ‘I wanted to actively engage [in ELAM’s politics]. I went to ELAM’s offices on my own’ (PP). Another participant, who was a member of ELAM’s section in a big city, explained that ‘a man or a woman, there’s no difference, one must be . . . sincerely devoted, to what we . . . aim to achieve, to be allowed into the party’ (NN, 20s, single, no children, university graduate). As these interview excerpts highlight, GD and ELAM women trouble far-right gender roles according to which women follow men into the far right and function as their passive proxies. However, it is by benefitting from the wins of previous women’s struggles – and particularly feminist struggles that challenged ideas about women’s auxiliary roles in political endeavours, which were seen as men’s prerogative – that this troubling becomes possible (Blee, 2002; Blee and Deutsch, 2012; Schreiber, 2008).

The (re)construction of far-right gender discourses through the use of feminist ideas, in which far-right women have a leading role, is often achieved through discursive movements that per se constitute manifestations of political agency. To exemplify, commenting on joining GD, a participant said,

There were more initiation rites for a woman, since . . . the majority were men . . . Therefore . . . it was very difficult [for a woman] to pass all the crash tests exercised [on potential party members] . . . One must be willing to . . . become a Golden Dawner, to become a political soldier, to be devoted, to be a worshipper of a cause . . . And that’s why we are political soldiers . . . We are going to fall fighting. We are the last defenders of the nation. (AA)

Participants often troubled far-right gender roles by manipulating language and terminology to claim strong links to the wider national culture. For example, this interviewee employs the term ‘political soldiers’ to describe who and what GD women are; a term associated with the masculine gender in wider Greek culture, ¹³ in which the act of soldiering – that is, fighting, killing, giving one’s life for a collective cause – has been associated with men. In doing so, she constitutes far-right women as agents of far-right political soldiering through a linguistic performative act that discursively establishes what it names.

Contrary to conclusions that may be drawn by only analysing the parties’ online material, the direct interviews with far-right women analysed in this article show that, by strategically invoking ideas and themes of feminism, far-right women (re)construct a far-right gender discourse that defines far-right women’s political agency as seminal in its own right, thus, challenging the centrality of gender complementarity to the actualisation of the far-right project. Far-right women see themselves as active and primary political agents whose exercise of political agency is essential for the achievement of their parties’ political, social and cultural aims. For instance, when asked what she would choose between having children and being active in GD, the same participant stated,

I decided to devote myself [to GD]. And I think I’m contributing . . . I have and feel the respect of my co-fighters . . . [not] because of my gender, but because of my personality, position and approach, regardless of gender. (AA)

Similarly, an ELAM woman politician explained,

If I had children . . . I wouldn’t be able [to actively engage in ELAM politics] . . . We have . . . a fight to fight here. We might deprive ourselves of things . . . because of what we believe in . . . One, woman or man, win their position in the party . . . if they . . . make a difference with their sword . . . I accepted [to be on ELAM’s ballot] to vindicate the female gender. (II, 30s, single, no children, university graduate)

In constructing themselves as political agents, GD and ELAM women trouble far-right gender roles. For them, their contribution to their parties stems from their abilities, not their gender, while the far-right political mission is prioritised over personal life choices, including having children. Participants do not question structural, institutional and intersectional inequalities exacerbated by austerity policies that limit women’s choices and opportunities (Gunnarsson Payne and Tornhill, 2021; Sprengholz, 2021), nor the pervasiveness of nationalism within their parties’ discourses, which necessitate individual sacrifices for the actualisation of the far-right political project. Motherhood is reversely instrumentalised, as far-right women do not invoke it as their ‘natural duty’ in the service of the far-right political project but revoke it to service the far-right political project. Such statements are indicative of a troubling of gender roles within the far right, as they mark a deviation from, and renegotiation of, women’s and gender role in a far-right political project.

Conclusion

This article has examined an important issue with implications for democratic pluralism and feminism, as a counter-hegemonic sociopolitical intervention: how far-right women’s formulations of political agency and (re)constructions of far-right gender discourses affect understandings of women’s political agency, gender, gender equality and feminism. The analysis of interviews with women who are active in far-right politics identified three formulations of political agency that participants referred to: radical motherhood; female political militancy/political militant femininity; and troubling of far-right gender roles. These show how, by simultaneously drawing on and disparaging feminism, far-right women constitute themselves as primary political agents and (re)conceptualise gender, gender equality and feminism in ways that contest their parties’ positions, thus (re)constructing flexible and versatile far-right gender discourses. The article highlights the importance of studying far-right women’s accounts of themselves to better understand women, gender and feminism’s role in far-right politics (Avanza, 2020; Pettersson, 2017; Schreiber, 2018). This article also contributes and speaks to other work on the gender dimension of conservative and far-right politics, including work on conservative and far-right women’s agency (e.g. Avanza, 2020; Davids, 2011), feminism’s employment by the conservative and far right (e.g. Elomäki and Kantola, 2018; Gunnarsson Payne and Tornhill, 2021), care racism (e.g. Mulinari and Neergaard, 2014; Petzen, 2012) and ‘gender ideology’ and anti-gender movements’ rise (e.g. Paternotte and Kuhar, 2018; Verloo and Paternotte, 2018).

Furthermore, the article confirms previous arguments in the literature that such gender discourses may contribute to far-right parties’ appeal to women with diverse views on gender, gender equality, political agency and feminism, as they may respond to various interests and demands that can be made from different positions (Petzen, 2012; Sprengholz, 2021). This is particularly the case in contexts such as Greece and Cyprus, that have been deeply affected by austerity and failed migration and asylum policies, where women’s avenues into politics continue to be restricted and intersectional feminism does not resonate to the same extent as nationalist interpretations of gender equality (Cullen, 2020; Danopoulos, 2017; Kamenou, 2019, 2020; Sauer et al., 2017). Given far-right parties’ transnational networks (Ahrens et al., 2018; Cullen, 2020), the recasting of feminism’s language and achievements into exclusionary versions of gender equality and ‘feminism’ to attract supporters applies far beyond Greece and Cyprus.

Being attentive to the meanings far-right women assign to feminist concepts and the ways in which they employ them for political purposes is crucial. Equally important is further examining the interplay between gender, political agency and the far right, nationally and transnationally, as constructed by far-right actors’ themselves. This points to the need for comparative research that examines both far-right women and men’s understandings of gender, gender equality, feminism and political agency. Such research should also locate these understandings in relation to emerging forms of far right’s transnational organisation, including through the use of social media and the web.