Comparing Far-Right Women’s Engagements with Feminism: Collective Identity Repertoires in France and Germany

The two far-right sister organisations Collectif Némésis in France and Lukreta in Germany both emerged in 2019 and have grown in popularity ever since. Despite their ideological proximity, transnational collaboration and shared focus on racialising sexual violence through anti-immigrant narratives, they diverge in their strategies and engagement with feminism. France’s Collectif Némésis explicitly claims the label of “identitarian feminism” and actively appropriates feminism (Calderaro 2025), while Germany’s Lukreta openly rejects any form of feminism and promotes “traditional” gender roles (Scheyer et al., forthcoming). This paper analyses how the respective national contexts shape these contrasting strategies of far-right women’s groups vis-à-vis feminist discourse and how both groups bridge these difference. Through comparative analysis of their online activism, tactics, and organisational positioning, this paper investigates what accounts for the differences in the two organisations’ strategies and collective identities. We identify three main categories for the analysis. First, the level and configuration of the institutionalisation of feminism: France’s centralised state feminism legitimises feminist rhetoric even in far-right circles, particularly given the established femonationalist turn in far-right party politics (Farris 2017, Scrinzi 2024) and electoral behaviour (Mayer 2015). Germany’s weaker institutionalisation of gender equality renders feminist identification less resonant for far-right actors. Second, policy framing and responses to street harassment created divergent opportunities. France’s hybrid framing of street harassment as gender-based violence and as a racialised issue (Calderaro 2023) facilitated far-right appropriation. Germany’s lack of policy attention to street harassment–in a context of racialised media framing of Cologne assaults (Boulila and Carri 2017; Wigger 2019)–left the far right monopolising the women’s safety-immigration nexus, incentivising antifeminist rather than appropriationist strategies among far-right women. Finally, movement traditions and far-right networks also matter: Némésis’ strategies reflect the metapolitical legacy of the French identitarian movement (and Nouvelle droite) and the longer-standing presence of organised far-right women (Della Sudda 2022), while Lukreta operates within a more male-dominated far-right milieu (Scheyer et al., 2025), where open antifeminism remains central. Ultimately, this research contributes to understanding how femonationalism operates differently across national boundaries and how far-right actors flexibly adapt to distinct configurations of gender politics in Europe.