Populist Discourse on Gender

In the last decade, the economic crisis and the mistrust in democratic institutions have contributed to a major crisis of political parties across Europe. This are some of the causes that led to the formation of political movements with purely populist characteristic as replacement of the traditional delegitimised bodies. The term “populism” has been discussed at length academically, and several definitions and analytic frameworks of the topic have been offered in the last four decades. I have been considering the most frequently used definitions of populism, as stated in many articles and books. Among these definitions, we can highlight the idea of populism as a political communication style and/or a set of discursive practices. Populism has gone global and despite a growth in populism studies it has been suggested that gender has arguably been marginalised. It seems evident considering that national populisms involve claims about “the people”, xenophobia, religious traditions, male-based leadership; also, the background imaginary of female populist leaders seem to be rooted in male stereotypes. Simplification and polarisation may not be conducive with feminism. It is important to note that there is a specific difference between populist parties and populist rhetoric; the former have determined characteristics and very often present authoritarian or presidentialized leaderships in the frame of hyper-representation; the latter is a discursive strategy and it can also be used – more or less frequently – by non-populist parties and/or leaders. We will present the first outcomes of forthcoming research on populist political parties through the analysis of a) party’s documents, b) electoral campaigns, c) electoral manifestos, d) social media political discourse and e) leaders ‘discourses. The analysis has been conducted using content analysis (EAA: Evaluative Assertion Analysis) for the points a), b) and c). The fifth point has been studied using the discourse analysis, while the fourth point has been approached through a “manual” content analysis. The research is aimed at problematizing the relationship and the impact of populist rhetoric on gender discourse, from one side; and to understand if (and how) gender plays a role (also as object of discourse and political issue) in the political communication of the exclusionary populism (usually right-wing oriented) and of inclusionary/social populism (usually left-wing oriented). The paper will also present a taxonomy of the relationships between populist parties and gender variables.