Between Democratic Erosion and Democratic Resilience: Conservative Women as Critical Actors Against the Normalisation of Far-Right Anti-Gender Discourse?

The increasingly extremist right-wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is threatening German democracy by using anti-gender mobilisation to undermine democratic norms. Focusing on the women's union (FU) of the German Christian Democrats (CDU), this paper examines how a centre-right women's party organisation responds to the normalisation of far- right anti-gender discourse. The paper asks: How does the FU mobilise in resistance to the AfD's masculinist culture and anti-gender mobilisations? Theoretically, I engage with feminist scholarship on opposition to gender equality and the mainstreaming of the far right, as well as debates on mainstream party responses. Four discursive responses are identified for analysis: Direct Opposition, Positive Framing, Co-optation and Ignorance. I also distinguish between women-centred and LGBTIQ* gender policy issues. Methodologically, I employ discourse analysis and iterative coding. The corpus covers the political media communication outlet Frau & Politik (2010–2024), as well as internal and external party and party organisation documents, Instagram communications and selected press quotes from representatives of the party's women's organisation. It also includes 17 in-depth semi-structured interviews with elite FU leaders and members, conducted between March and September 2025. The findings reveal domain-specific boundary work. Regarding women's issues, the FU establishes a visible firewall by directly opposing the familialism of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and positively framing women's participation, childcare expansion, protection from violence, leadership, and pay equity. In contrast, with regard to LGBTIQ* issues, the FU adopts far-right problem definitions within protection-and-procedure frames that prioritise biology, women-only spaces, parental rights and sporting fairness. It also practises selective avoidance in public channels. Language politics often overlap with those of the AfD. Ignorance lowers the salience of LGBTIQ* issues and enables incremental normalisation without formal cooperation. These discursive responses travel across party arenas and media, shifting what is considered acceptable within the mainstream. Empirically, the paper illustrates how conservative women's party organisations blur the boundaries between feminist and anti-feminist actors, thereby complicating their possible repertoire of action against far-right anti-feminism and the intersection of gender politics, democratic erosion and resilience.