Gender Positional Deprivation. Or how "losers of feminism" might vote for right-wing populist parties

The theoretical proposal tries to understand the structural roots of the needs and demands represented by right-wing populist parties (RWPP). Most recent literature trying to explain RWPP voting has pointed out, and empirically tested, how immediate material circumstances (particularly if measured in "objective terms") have less importance for voting behaviour (particularly the preference for populist parties both on the left and the right) than subjective, relational and long-term understanding of oneself social position as winner or loser (Häusermann et al., 2023: 2). This stream of literature, primarily inspired in the economic voting tradition, has focused on the concepts of "status loss" and "status threat" in an almost exclusive economic (socio-professional) dimension. However, Häusermann et al. (2023: 2) point out that "literature on changing social hierarchies in times of structural change indicate that voter' sense of (lacking) opportunities relate to deeper grievances linked to questions of dignity, identity and belonging in a changing society". Our theoretical proposal tries to operationalise those "deeper grievances" by adapting the concepts of relative and positional deprivation to include gender in specific ways. We argue that the economic and cultural transformations of Western democracies have operated in a gendered way (Dietze & Roth, 2020a) that has produced different classes of winners and losers between and among men and women. The paper also serves as the theoretical anchorage for developing new survey questions to be tested within the UNTWIST project's second methodological phase.