Anti-gender politics as a foreign policy tool: the case of Russia's "traditional values"

Anti-gender politics have received increased attention. On the one hand, a body of scholarship focuses on the transnational networks and coalitions behind these movements and how feminist actors or policies have responded to them. On the other hand, democratization scholars investigate how anti-gender politics are intrinsic to far-right parties and hence the threat democratic backsliding poses for gender equality. What is largely left out of the analytical picture is anti-gender politics as a foreign policy. Based on Russia as a case study, I argue that anti-genderism is not simply intrinsic to an authoritarian worldview. Rather it is employed as a strategic foreign policy tool. The narrative of “traditional Russian values” is used relationally to create regime legitimacy and to justify aggressive foreign policy. The narrative is employed for what I theorize as authoritarian “Othering back” purposes. First, via the narrative of “traditional values” which are opposed to “gender ideology”, the West can be portrayed as degenerate and thus inferior. In return, this justifies the rejection of democracy altogether and hence the assertive self-exclusion from universalism. Finally, this allows casting an aggression war as a preemptive strike against the expansion of Western “gender ideology”, which is equated to a military threat.