Passion, Passiveness, and Gender: Analyzing the Narratives of Populist Right-Wing Party Members

Obsession, passion, indifference, and apathy – The relationship between populist right-wing and gender has been described as contradictory. Yet, gender and populist right-wing remains only an emerging field of study (Dietze & Roth 2020). In addition, scholars have been intrigued by the emotional draw of the populist right-wing (Hochschild 2016; Salmela & von Scheve 2017). It is apparent, that emotions and affectivity are at the core of the relation between populist right-wing and gender – but how? What kind of affective genders and gendered emotions are involved in populist right-wing? In this article, I explore the affective meanings of gender in a populist right-wing party’s everyday politics. I utilize a narrative approach to analyze the interview speech of the members of a Finnish parliamentary party, the Finns Party. Like many other populist right-wing parties, the Finns are a masculine and male-dominated party by their politics (Kantola & Lombardo 2019) and member base (Keipi et al. 2017). Yet, there have always been women in key positions in the party similar to several populist right-wing parties. The party members' interview data will be collected in late 2024 and early 2025 during the county and municipal elections in Finland. Interviewing the populist right-wing remains less common than research based on existing — often quantitative — data (Damhuis & de Jonge 2022). However, especially when focusing on gender and emotions, research engaged with the populist right-wing rather than research on it appears more favorable. In terms of the expected results, the party members’ stories reflect not only the reality of the party and Finnish society but through them, we can also explore the broader Western populist right-wing and its emotional relation to gender. The paper presents the emotional links between gender and the populist right-wing, thus bringing together a range of political research. Since the paper is based on party members’ interview data which is less common in the research of the populist right-wing, it therefore also contributes to the methodological debate on the topic.