Standing For and Acting Against? Hybrid Representation in Far-Right (Anti-)Gender Politics

Scholarship increasingly conceptualizes anti-gender mobilization as structurally entangled with contemporary far-right populism (Meret and Scrinzi 2024; Norocel 2023; Dietze and Roth 2020; Graff and Korolczuk 2021; Kuhar and Paternotte 2017). While analytically distinct yet interconnected (Paternotte and Kuhar 2018), existing research has focused primarily on ideology, discourse, or policy outcomes, paying less attention to how anti-gender mobilization reshapes political representation. This paper addresses this gap by analyzing how far-right populist parties that explicitly incorporate anti-genderism into their political projects engage with gendered claims within democratic institutions, and with what consequences for feminist understandings of symbolic and substantive representation. Romanian far-right populist parties exhibit a patterned ambivalence toward women, gender and political representation, combining opposition to “gender ideology” with selective engagement on gender-based violence (domestic, sexual harassment, femicide) and reproduction. Legislative initiatives and party-affiliated activities reveal how recognition of harm and state protection coexist with the depoliticization and limitation of women’s rights, including when such claims are articulated by women representatives themselves. Rather than interpreting these practices as contradictions or as mere instrumentalization or “weaponization” of women’s rights, the paper advances hybrid representation as a conceptual framework that captures the inherent ambivalence of far-right gender politics (Blee 2020; Köttig, Bitzan, and Petö 2017). Hybrid representation refers to a stable mode of representative practice in which registers of recognition (naming harm, acknowledging women as subjects of concern), protection (state care and intervention), and restriction (limitation of rights, autonomy, and feminist claims) coexist. This framework foregrounds representative practices and their effects, showing how far-right actors simultaneously reshape the spaces of representation, advance selective and exclusionary claims, and transform the processes of representation. Methodologically, the paper employs Critical Frame Analysis (Krizsán and Popa 2018; Krizsán et al. 2018; Lombardo and Meier 2014; Verloo 2005, 2007) to examine how far-right anti-gender actors construct and institutionalize gendered policy frames. The analysis draws on Romanian party programs, legislative initiatives, and parliamentary debates to trace the evolution, contestation, and hybridization of frames on gender policies between 2020 and 2026, covering both the entry and consolidation of far-right parties in Parliament. The paper’s second contribution lies in placing hybrid representation in critical dialogue with feminist theories of political representation, particularly reflections on symbolic and substantive representation (Lombardo and Meier 2014; Celis et al 2014; Childs 2004, 2008). Feminist theorization enables a nuanced reflection on how far-right actors actively reconfigure what it means to “stand for” and “act for” women, showing how symbolic inclusion and protection-oriented claims can coexist with the depoliticization of structural gender inequalities and the erosion of substantive representation. Feminist approaches thus emerge as indispensable analytical tools for understanding the representational consequences of the ambivalent modes of representation through which far-right parties engage with women, gender, sexuality. Although empirically anchored in Romania, the paper advances hybrid representation as a concept with broader potential comparative relevance for analyzing the ambivalent interaction between far-right parties, anti-genderism, and the gendered transformation of political representation across democratic contexts, thereby contributing to debates on far-right politics, anti-gender mobilization, and political representation.