Gender Ideology, Far-Right Mobilisation and Feminist Counter-Strategies in South America

Abstract

This panel examines how far-right projects in South America mobilise gender as a central political battleground, treating anti-feminism not as rhetoric at the margins but as a governing strategy that reorganises public debate, coalition-building, and democratic norms. Drawing on gender and politics scholarship on backlash, illiberalism, and moral regulation, it foregrounds the ways gendered violence operates across registers: as discursive misogyny that legitimises rollback, as disinformation campaigns that weaponise ‘gender ideology’ to polarise electorates, and as institutional pressures that narrow reproductive autonomy and equal participation. The panel also highlights how digital infrastructures intensify exposure to harassment and affective polarisation, making online spaces a key site of gender-based violence as well as feminist organising. Across these dynamics, it asks how feminist resistance—electoral, street-level, legal, and digital—confronts authoritarian drift while defending rights and reasserting democratic futures.

Title	Details
All Politics Are Reproductive Politics: Brazil’s Feminist Response to Religious Fundamentalism	View Paper Details
Brazilian Digital Feminism in Two Critical Turning Points: New Elements and Challenges on the Scene (2010–2025)	View Paper Details
Gender Ideology as Political Strategy: Anti-Gender Backlash, Democratic Coalition-Building, and Progressive Governance in Brazil	View Paper Details
The Far-Right’s Gender Politics in Chile’s Failed Constitutional Process	View Paper Details
Far-right movements and anti-feminism in Argentina and Brazil	View Paper Details