A transnational feminist approach to anti-gender politics

The introduction to this edited volume outlines a transnational approach to the study of anti-gender politics. It locates anti-gender politics in the structures of coloniality, racial capitalism, and resurgent nationalisms by highlighting connections and convergences in anti-gender politics in Argentina, Chile, China, Germany, the Persian Gulf, Hungary, India, Pakistan, Peru, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, Uganda, the UK, and the US. In doing so, the chapter challenges and further develops taken-for-granted frameworks developed in anti-gender research. Firstly, the focus on transnational anti-gender politics unsettles singular ‘origin stories’ that are in danger of obscuring non-Western locations from scholarly consideration. Secondly, a transnational approach contests the notion that anti-gender politics derive solely from right-wing nationalist and/or conservative religious actors, highlighting instead how anti-gender mobilisations derive from a variety of positions including more centrist, secular, liberal, leftist, and even presumably feminist perspectives. Thirdly, this approach sharpens the conceptual tools available for studying and understanding anti-gender politics by pushing for a more materialist conceptualisation that goes beyond dominant understandings of anti-gender politics as ‘backlash’ or ‘symbolic glue’. Taken together, these challenges open new avenues for building knowledges and solidarities across national contexts to contest the multi-headed hydra that is transnational anti-gender politics.