Between Feminism and Antifeminism: How Christian Democratic Women Respond to Far-Right Antifeminism in Germany

Reactions to the far right have, until now, often been analysed from the perspective of election campaigns and formal party-political cooperation on migration issues. This article shifts the focus to discursive responses and gender politics in order to examine how female politicians from mainstream conservative parties respond to the far right’s anti-feminism. Based on a qualitative case study of the Women’s Union (FU), the women’s organisation of the established right-wing conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the study draws on four types of empirical data: public communications from the FU, documents, media statements, and 17 semistructured interviews with leaders and members of the FU. This data shows that the reactions of Christian Democratic women to the anti-feminism of the far right are issue-specific. On women-centred gender equality issues, FU politicians engage in negative engagement by portraying the AfD as hostile to women’s political participation, their economic independence and democratic equality. This distinction is underpinned by a conservative-feminist self-definition that defines legitimate gender equality policy as pragmatic, women-centred and rooted in ‘experience’. However, this feminism reaches its limits when frames challenge a biologically grounded understanding of women as the central subject of gender equality policy. In debates on the inclusion of trans and non-binary people, as well as on intersectionality, politicians at the FU are shifting towards a positive engagement by taking up selected anti-gender and anti-intersectionality frames and translating them into a moderate conservative discourse. This article contributes to research on the mainstreaming of the far right, the representation of conservative women and reactions to anti-feminism by demonstrating how formal distance from the far right can coexist with discursive proximity on selected gender issues.