From Elite Alliance to Grassroots Mobilization: The International Organization for the Family and the Scaling of Anti-Gender Politics

The rise of anti-gender politics is a defining feature of the contemporary far-right, visible in global protests against abortion clinics, anti-trans campaigns, and the rollback of LGBTIQ+ rights (Datta, 2021; Paternotte, 2023). While often analyzed as a reactive force (Paternotte & Kuhar, 2018), this paper argues that anti-gender activism is a strategically evolving and productive political project. I examine this through a case study of the International Organization for the Family (IOF), a key node in the transnational network opposing sexual and reproductive rights (Kalm & Meeuwisse, 2023; Koch, 2024). Moving beyond a focus on its well-known World Congress of Families (WCF) events, this research traces the IOF’s deliberate evolution from an interfaith alliance of political elites within UN spaces into a specialized, grassroots-oriented coalition. The paper contends that this strategic shift was pivotal for the IOF’s influence. By adopting family politics as a master frame, the organization unified disparate conservative factions. This analysis, drawing on the concept of glocalization (Míla O’Sullivan & Krulišová, 2020), demonstrates how the IOF built a powerful network that strategically connects civil society actors, policymakers, and knowledge brokers. I chart this transformation across three phases: its origins in the conflicts of the 1990s UN conferences in Cairo and Beijing; its subsequent turn towards direct policymaking engagement; and its recent specialization in grassroots mobilization (Ayoub & Stoeckl, 2024; Buss & Herman, 2003). Archival research and network analysis reveal how the IOF’s expansion into regions like Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America was not marginal but central to its strategy, enabling it to tap into pre-existing local networks and significantly scale its participation and impact. This paper concludes that the IOF’s trajectory exemplifies a broader trend of far-right specialization. Its ability to operate simultaneously at elite and grassroots levels, a form of glocalized activism, has been crucial to its resilience and growth. Understanding this strategic evolution is essential for mapping the dynamic and multi-scalar nature of anti-gender politics as a transformative force in global politics.