Gendered Backlash and the Advance of Neoconservatism: Abortion Politics and Anti-Gender Agendas in Brazil, Argentina, and the United States (2020–2025)

This paper investigates how the advance of neoconservative politics has affected abortion debates and contributed to democratic erosion through anti-gender dynamics in Brazil, Argentina, and the United States between 2020 and 2025. The study engages with Political Conflict Theory, employing the concept of Political Opportunity Structures (Eisinger, 1973; Tilly, 1978; Tarrow, 1994; McAdam, 1996) to analyse how shifts in political environments open and close spaces for action and reaction. It argues that these opportunity structures are not neutral but are constantly reshaped through conflicts that include institutional, symbolic, and digital forms of violence. Building on Meyer and Minkoff’s (2004) understanding of opportunities as dynamic and multi-scalar; on Gomes’ (2023) reinterpretation of opportunity structures through the lens of violence in Latin America; and on Sardenberg, Kubík Mano and Sacchet’s (2024) analysis of backlash as an organized and historically embedded reaction to feminist advances in Brazil, the paper aims to support the hypothesis that major feminist and reproductive rights advances, such as the legalization of abortion until the 14th week of pregnancy in Argentina (2020), activate reactive neoconservative backlash. We discuss if this generates cyclical dynamics of contention, in which progressive openings and conservative reactions mutually reconfigure political opportunity structures. Empirically, the research conducts a comparative analysis across three countries, examining policy proposals, public statements, and transnational alliances between 2020 and 2025. The overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States (2022), the introduction of restrictive bills in Brazil (2024) and President Milei’s ongoing rollback of reproductive health policies in Argentina – including cuts to the distribution of medical supplies for legal abortions and the dismantling of the Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity – exemplify how anti-abortion coalitions circulate frames and moral narratives across contexts to undermine reproductive rights and democratic norms. As Biroli, Vaggione, and Machado (2020) note, neoconservative actors fuse religious morality with neoliberal rationalities, fostering an anti-pluralist culture that erodes democratic principles. By comparing these trajectories, the paper seeks to contribute to understanding gendered backlash as a mechanism of democratic erosion and highlights feminist resistance, embodied by the Marea Verde, as a counterforce of democratic renewal.