Keeping One's House and Country Tidy: Performing Authentic Conservative Conceptions of Gender and Politics in Hungary and Romania

The unmediated quality of communication specific to social networking sites, such as Facebook, is singled out to provide authenticity in the relationship between politicians and voters. Authenticity, the radical right politicians claim, is what separates them from other politicians. Having in mind the conflict between conservative views about gender roles and motherhood with political and economic realities, the present study analyzes how women politicians negotiate ideological beliefs about gender roles with their interests in promoting their political career through Facebook, which allow them to personalize the performance of a perceivably authentic gendered political identity. Our comparative study concentrates on four women politicians on the right-wing conservative ideological continuum, including both radical right populist and center-right politicians: Pelczné Gáll Ildikó (Fidesz) and Dúró Dóra (Jobbik) in Hungary, respectively Elena Udrea (PMP) and Monica Macovei (M10) in Romania. The timeframe of our analysis stretches over a year (January 1 - December 31 2014), covering both the local and EU elections in Hungary, and the EU and presidential elections in Romania. The study draws on the Butlerian conceptions of performativity, citationality and interpellation, in order to explore the construction of gendered political identities and self-representations through Facebook. The aim of the study is, on the one hand, to come closer to providing a comprehensive analysis of the link between gender, right-wing conservative ideological continuum and social networking sites communication logic. The study also aims, on the other hand, to illustrate in a comparative framework the place of radical right populism within right-wing conservative ideological continuum and to evince the means of performing one's gendered identity in politics.