'War on Gender’: A Conservative Response to Neoliberalism?

Opposition to feminism, gender equality and sexual democracy is not a new phenomenon, but the current wave of anti-gender mobilization in Europe and beyond is hardly business as usual. Contemporary ‘war on gender’ appears to be a new ideological and political configuration, which successfully combines the local and the transnational, making possible successful mass mobilization. This paper highlights the ways in which contemporary conservative actors skillfully combine socially conservative agenda with critique of some aspects of neoliberalism, effectively tapping into people’s disillusionment with political and intellectual elite, economic anxiety and growing sense of insecurity. Drawing on the analyses of anti-gender mobilizations in contemporary Central-Eastern Europe, with specific focus on parental movements and Poland, this paper shows how the activists effectively mobilize people by promoting the view on family as the site of solidarity, the last frontier of defense against individualism and consumerism, simultaneously portraying ‘gender’ and feminism as agents of neoliberal trends, in a somewhat distorted version of Fraser’s and others critique of ‘free market feminism’. While feminists scholars pointed out that neoliberalism goes hand in hand with neoconservative agenda leading to growing inequalities, human rights violations and opposition to women’s rights and gender equality (Brown 2006, Walby 2009), ‘anti-genderists’ equate rampant individualism characteristic to neoliberalism with feminism, and claim that gender equality policies are just a cover up for economic colonization. The analysis is based on the outcomes of a research project on parental and anti-gender activism in contemporary Poland conducted in 2011-2015, which included interviews with activists, analysis of the public discourse and participant observations.