Contesting Gender Norms: Strategies against Feminist Foreign Policy by Far-Right and Conservatives in Germany

Shortly after taking office, Germany’s new conservative-led government decided to scrap the country’s Feminist Foreign Policy (FFP), introduced in March 2023 by then Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. While the short-lived “Feministische Außenpolitik” has drawn scholarly attention, little is known about the factors leading to its silencing. In this paper, I examine the role of domestic opposition by analysing the contestation of Feminist Foreign Policy between 2023 and 2025 by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and the conservative CDU/CSU. Theoretically, I approach FFP as a norm and build on scholarship on anti-gender mobilisation. Methodologically, the research is based on discourse analysis of parliamentary debates and statements of selected politicians, complemented by semi-structured interviews with policy officials and experts. The aim of the paper is to identify and compare the discursive strategies employed by AfD and CDU/CSU politicians to contest the FFP norm. In doing so, this study advances theoretical understandings of pro-gender norms contestation and the ways in which anti-gender mobilisation shapes (feminist) foreign policy discourse. Drawing on concepts of “gender bashing” and “gendered silencing”, the analysis shows that AfD politicians contested FFP as part of a foreign imposition of the so-called “gender ideology” and alongside a broader “bundle of norms” tied to democracy and liberal values, whereas CDU/CSU politicians articulated more implicit forms of contestation without overtly using anti-gender rhetoric. The article, however, argues that conservatives shared certain gendered strategies aimed at silencing the voices of FFP advocates and thus contributed to the partial normalisation of the far-right’s anti-gender/anti-feminist positions.