Sovereignty or anti-gender backlash? Examining the link between Eurosceptic and anti-gender equality attitudes

Across Europe, backlash against gender equality has become a visible feature of the broader polycrisis, and populist far-right parties often pair anti-gender positions with Euroscepticism. Yet, what remains unclear is the extent to which such attitudes converge among citizens. We still lack evidence of whether/how opposition to gender equality contributes to resistance to further European integration. We examine these links using new data from the ActEU survey, which includes measures of support for European integration in specific policy fields and of attitudes toward gender equality policies and feminism. This design allows us to distinguish between two mechanisms often conflated in debates on the populist right: opposition to EU-level authority in a domains perceived as central to national sovereignty, and backlash against gender equality . We analyze how support for gender-equality policies, broader GAL-TAN orientations, and affective polarization towards feminist groups structure preferences over EU integration. In doing so, we assess whether Euroscepticism primarily reflects sovereignty concerns or aligns more broadly with anti-gender backlash, and how these patterns vary across countries. In doing so, the paper clarifies the attitudinal foundations of anti-gender mobilisation and situates them within the politics of European integration, providing new evidence on how anti-gender and sovereignty concerns interact in shaping support for the EU.