'We are political soldiers willing to die for our party': Women, gender and political agency in the Greek Golden Dawn

This paper is based on ethnographic research conducted in 2013 on women, gender and political agency in the Greek radical right party, Golden Dawn (GD). Although notable research about various aspects of the rise of the radical right across Europe has been produced, with few exceptions, it continues to ignore gender or treat it as a merely descriptive term that pertains to sex difference. This might be partially explained by two facts: Firstly, women still constitute a minority of the voters, activists and politicians of radical right political parties and groups. Secondly, though mainstream (mainly quantitative) political science approaches to voter behavior and activism might control for gender differences, they ignore gender as a socially constructed form of differentiation. Nonetheless, gender and gender discourses are enmeshed in the production and dissemination of radical right ideology, as well as in the legitimization and preservation of radical right parties’ masculine, hierarchical (and even quasi-military) structure, and xenophobic, racist, sexist and homophobic strategies. Moreover, in recent years, conventional understandings of women’s role have been challenged within radical right parties, where women actively participate, join the ranks, get on the ballot, run for office and publicly take a position on issues that pertain to their parties’ ideology. The importance of gender is all the more exemplified, while easy assumptions about gender and extremist agency are questioned, by women’s active participation in such parties and in their sometimes illegal activities. Such incidents exemplify women’s key role as agents in radical right parties, which has been generally overlooked both by students of the radical right and by some strands of gender theory, which have tended to portray women as victims and men as the perpetrators of violence. This paper investigates the role of gender and women’s political agency in the GD, by addressing the following questions: 1) Do GD women comply with, or challenge party gender ideology and organization structure? Why and how do they do so? 2) How do they understand their involvement in male-dominated political parties? 3) How do they reconcile the tensions between party ideology and organization structure, and their role in the party? 4) What is the impact of GD women’s employed and communicated gender structures on their parties’ ideology, organization structure and strategies? Situated within an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that draws upon gender studies, political science, sociology and European studies, and adopting a close-up and multi-methodological approach that combines interviewing, participant observation and document and audiovisual material analysis, this aims to produce a rich and nuanced depiction of gender and women’s political agency in the GD.