Gendering Democratic Erosion and Resilience in the UK

As a longstanding liberal democracy, the UK is an important case-study of democratic erosion and potentially democratic resilience. It experienced a period of democratic erosion after the 2016 Brexit referendum, overseen by an increasingly chaotic Conservative governments engaging in executive overreach, undermining institutions like the judiciary, using culture wars and xenophobic discourses e.g. around migration (Haggard and Kaufman 2020). In this context of incremental democratic erosion, these trends were accompanied by the growth of right-wing populism both inside and outside the conservative party. Effective anti-gender movements also flourished, with campaigns coalescing around trans rights and associated issues, bringing considerable success,. Although the Conservative’s electoral defeat in July 2024 brought a new Labour government, right-wing populism and anti-gender campaigning have not gone away. However, in comparison to the flourishing theoretical and empirical literatures on anti-gender movements and democratic backsliding in Europe, Latin America and the USA, there has been surprisingly little research on anti-gender actors and their links to right-wing populism and democratic erosion in the UK. This paper explores how these UK processes were gendered in order to better understand how and when democratic resilience can be fostered. Building on Graff and Korulczuk’s (2022) notion of an ‘opportunistic synergy’ between anti-gender campaigns and right-wing populism developed for the analysis of East/Central Europe, this paper explores the loose networks of UK anti-gender actors and right-wing populists operating in right-wing think tanks, political parties, and civil society groups. It draws on qualitative data derived from interviews, participant observation, recordings of meetings, parliamentary proceedings and TV programmes, as well as print and social media sources. It identifies three key groupings active in and around the governing Conservative party (with some overlap between them) who have coalesced around certain anti-gender and anti-trans issues. First, ‘gender critical’ actors, primarily women, including some gender critical feminists, who, citing the primacy of biological sex, argue they are defending both the rights of women and girls and women-only spaces. Second, a small, but influential, number of Evangelical Christians operating on the Right of the Conservative party who prioritize ‘safeguarding children’ and defeating ‘gender ideology’; and third, right-wing populist Conservative politicians and other actors within the right-wing ecosphere who, more opportunistically, increasingly integrated anti-gender ideology/anti trans discourses into their xenophobic anti migrant and anti-woke/anti-liberal elite rhetoric. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of the UK case for a gendered understanding democratic erosion as well as resilience, including the capacity to resist anti-gender actors and right-wing populism. It considers, for example, how far the appropriation of women’s rights discourses by UK anti-gender actors, as well as the engagement of some gender critical feminists with them, contributed to the effectiveness of anti-gender actors and undermined the emergence of a unified response from feminists in civil society. It explores how, at the same, right-wing populists in and around the conservative government, using culture wars rhetoric and taking advantage of a chaotic ruling party, could undermine, delay or stymie progressive change (such as the implementation of the exclusion zones around abortion clinics).