Two Gender–Equal Nations? Anti-Gender Re-Configurations of National Belonging in Sweden and Spain

ABSTRACT

Gender equality and the rights of LGBTQI* and people of colour are being contested across the globe due to the rise of anti-gender far-right politics and movements that threaten feminist socio-political gains. In a nostalgic defence for a traditional gender order, these exclusionary politics articulate nativist, gendered and racial ideas of the nation. This paper examines anti-gender discourses in relation to dominant discourses of gender equality in specific national contexts and nation-making. We develop the concept of nation-gender equality nexus to account for the different imaginaries of the nation in relation to gender equality that are (re)produced by anti-gender forces through a comparative study of Sweden and Spain. We argue that Swedish and Spanish anti-gender actors configure nationhood and belonging through the reinterpretation of dominant discourses on gender equality in their respective contexts, identifying two main axes that articulate this construction: religion-secularism and migration-race. As a result, anti-gender actors produce different nation-gender configurations that lead to specific boundaries of national belonging and exclusion across the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and citizenship.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-gender
• national belonging
• race
• religion

Sustainable Development Goals:

• SDG 5: Gender equality

Introduction

Gender equality and LGBTQI* and minorities’ rights are being increasingly contested across the globe by political parties and movements that oppose equality and feminist politics. In a nostalgic defence for a so-called traditional gender order, these exclusionary politics articulate nativist, gendered and racial ideas of the nation. Through a comparative analysis of Sweden and Spain, this paper explores how the so-called anti-gender actors interact with the dominant discursive frameworks of gender equality in relation to nation-making in a given context. By anti-gender actors we refer to those who oppose feminist and equality efforts in a range of areas —including sexual and reproductive rights, LGBT¹ rights, anti-racist politics, sexual education and gender studies, etc–, and whose international influence has increased in the last decade (Graff & Korolczuk, 2021; Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017). We build, thus, on the literature that distinguishes this relatively “new” phenomenon from the more traditional resistance towards gender equality and other egalitarian efforts (Kuhar, 2023). We see the increasing presence of anti-gender actors and their growing opposition to gender equality as both a response to existing gender regimes and an attempt to reconfigure them. Given the centrality of nation-building in anti-gender actors’ ideologies, we explore the re-imagining of the nation and belonging through their reinterpretation of the dominant framework on gender equality in their countries. We refer to this configuration as the nation-gender equality nexus. We analyse how anti-gender forces produce a new imaginary of the nation, drawing on specific gender equality discourses that render only some citizens and cultural traditions worthy of belonging to the national project. Central to this nation-gender nexus is the configuration of race, and the repertoires employed to reproduce seemingly pro-women racist discourses mobilizing anti-immigration sentiments, thus helping unfold rhetoric grounded on the racialization of sexism (Sauer & Siim, 2020; Scrinzi, 2024).

Through the comparative analysis of Sweden and Spain, we argue that anti-gender actors do not articulate their discourses in a monolithic fashion, but rather, these are context-dependent and shaped by the existing gender regimes and ideologies where they unfold (Alonso et al., 2023). The cases of Sweden and Spain allow us to explore the anti-gender configurations in two countries with different gender regimes and historical approaches to gender equality but an overall strong record of gender equality legislative and policy performance. In 2023, Sweden ranked first and Spain fourth on the Gender Equality Index for the EU (EIGE, 2023a, 2023b). While Sweden has pioneered the adoption of gender equality policies and gender mainstreaming, Spain’s journey in enacting equality laws had a later start. Despite this, Spain has accelerated its institutional pace towards equality, influenced by its entrance into the European Economic Union (1986) and the Socialist Party’s impulse during the democratization process (Bustelo, 2016), and has passed crucial reforms and legislation. Yet, the hegemonic discourses of gender equality in Sweden and Spain—including institutional politics and mainstream social movements—tend to rely on gender-only or, at most, gender-centred intersectionality approaches. An intersectional perspective—that considers inequalities as always entangled and mutually co-constituting (Christoffersen & Emejulu, 2023)—allows us to analyse how anti-gender actors feed on exclusionary discourses on gender equality and feminism that are predominant in their national contexts. In this paper, we argue that the lack of intersectionality in the mainstream gender equality frameworks in Sweden and Spain might offer a productive terrain for anti-gender actors to articulate exclusionary discourses along racial, ethnic, religious and citizenship lines.

The overarching questions that guide our research are the following: 1) How do anti-gender actors respond to dominant frameworks of gender equality in Sweden and Spain?; 2) In doing this, how do they reconfigure the relationship between gender equality and nation in these countries?; 3) As a result, what politics of belonging are (re)produced? To answer them, we draw on a selection of texts analysing anti-gender movements in both countries. Conceptually, a pivotal work for us is Yuval-Davies’ theorization on the way gender relations underpin the making of nations and nationalism and its implications for belonging (2011). We focus on how anti-gender actors contest and reformulate dominant gender equality frameworks in Sweden and Spain through two specific axes of national-building: a) religion-secularism; b) race and migration. We argue that distinct responses are articulated in each national context, thus producing different national imaginaries that define boundaries of belonging and exclusion based on the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, religion and citizenship. By exploring these dynamics, the article provides new insights into the gender regimes of Sweden and Spain and their implications for national boundary-making.

Theoretical Framework: Nation, Race, Gender, and Politics of Belonging

Gendered Nation-Building

Many feminist scholars have argued that gender is central to the ideological construction of the nation and nationalism. Previous research has explored the gendered underpinnings of nation-building and the role that masculinity, femininity and sexuality play in the imagining of nations (Farris, 2017; Nagel, 1998; Puar, 2007; Yuval-Davis, 1997).

In her work, Nagel frames processes of nation-building as gendered, arguing that nationalist politics underscoring national projects are a “masculinist enterprise” involving “masculine institutions, masculine processes and masculine activities” (1998, pp. 244–245). In a similar light, Yuval-Davis (1997) explores the masculinist and heteronormative undertone that often shapes discourses of nationalism and nation-building, where masculinity and femininity are given specific roles. Nationalist discourses dichotomize gender and attribute men the masculine and crucial task of defending and saving the homeland, and women the feminine role of “social reproducers’’ and “symbolic makers” of the nation, thus relegating them together with non-white populations as secondary to the nation’s political project. This configuration of the nation hinders the relationship between nationalism, gender equality and feminist agendas, which tend to be presented as oppositional (Enguix Grau, 2023). Similarly, Patternote and Kuhar (2018) argue that nation-building projects are central to anti-gender, racist and Islamophobic campaigning in Western European countries. However, assuming such opposition also reflects a Western-centric hegemonic perspective on nation-making that conceals the potential for a positive relationship between feminist and nationalist projects, as in emancipatory processes of self-determination or national liberation struggles by ethnic and religious minorities (Enguix Grau, 2023; Rodó-Zárate, 2020).

Negotiating Gender and Racial Regimes

Walby describes gender regime as “a set of interrelated gendered social relations and gendered institutions that constitutes a system” (2009, p. 301) and argues that gender regimes are varied and constantly intersect with other regimes of inequality. Building on Walby’s work, Alonso et al. (2023, p. 2) state that gender regimes can change as a result of the continuous interplay between “pro- and anti-feminist” forces aiming to progress or backslide in terms of equality. In this regard, we are witnessing the articulation of a transnational anti-gender movement seeking to delegitimize feminist advances, displace feminism from the political and public agenda and impose their own (Krizsán & Roggeband, 2021). The negotiated dimension of gender regimes gives us a conceptual tool to analyse the anti-gender productive contestation of the dominant gender equality discourses in our two cases of study, Sweden and Spain.

Gender regimes coexist and intersect with other inequality regimes, especially “racial regimes” (Mulinari & Neergaard, 2017; Sältenberg, 2022). Mulinari and Neergaard define “racial regime” as a “societal struggle around social relation in and across nation-states, configuring humanness and citizens by the constructions of race” (2017, p. 2). Racial regimes, thus, are configured in relation to nation-states and determine who and what categories of people are attributed the value of being human—as well as who is excluded from humanness. We build on this definition of the racial regime, in dialogue with Walby’s work, to explore the (re)configurations of the categories of race and gender within nation-states and their relation to various struggles for social justice. In other words, what we define as “gender regimes” and “racial regimes” appear as intrinsically intertwined through the interconnectedness of the nation-state (Scrinzi, 2024). Thus, understanding gender, race, and the nation-state as inseparable analytical categories, we explore and compare their forms of relationality in Sweden and Spain.

Politics of Belonging

Exploring the relationship between the nation and the issue of belonging, Yuval-Davis (2011) argues it is necessary to differentiate between what she understands as on the one hand “belonging”, and on the other hand “politics of belonging”. She describes “belonging” as a subjective experience attached to issues concerning social location, emotional attachment to “imagined” communities, and political and ethical value systems. “politics of belonging”, on the other hand, is underpinned by neoliberal globalization and nationalist projects, as well as shaped by the central question of what is required to “belong” (2011). The politics of belonging, in Yuval-Davis’s words, includes “also struggles around the determination of what is involved in belonging, in being a member of a community, and of what roles specific social locations and specific narratives of identity play in this” (2006, p. 205). This, for her, leads to the construction of boundaries, an “us” versus “them” that delineates a national imagined community articulated through practices of inclusion and exclusion (Yuval-Davis, 2011). Drawing on this, we build our understanding of the politics of belonging as (re)produced through anti-gender actors’ discourses. We analyse how these actors re-politicize national belonging and its relation to gender and race within specific gender equality discourses in both Sweden and Spain.

Methodology

We propose a comparative analysis of Sweden and Spain to explore how anti-gender discourses interact with the dominant frameworks on gender equality in their respective contexts. To operationalize this interaction, we use the concept of nation-gender equality nexus, and further develop it considering the entanglement with other key axes of national belonging such as religion-secularism and migration-race. We define anti-gender discourses as the opposition to feminist and gender equality efforts—depicted as ideological indoctrination or as “gender ideology”—in a range of topics including LGBT rights, reproductive rights, sexual education, gender equality policies and gender studies, among others (Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017). The concept of anti-gender seeks to distinguish a relatively “newer” phenomenon from the more traditional rejection of gender equality and feminist politics (Kuhar, 2023).

So-called anti-gender actors are not a homogenous category. A diversity of actors articulate anti-gender discourses, including right-wing and far-right parties, Christian fundamentalists and other religious institutions, lobbying organizations, and conservative intellectuals, among others (Kováts & Põim, 2015). Thus, anti-gender discourses are often combined with other ideological and political interests. In our analysis of the Swedish and Spanish cases, this diversity translates into the relevance of the two axes—religion-secularism and migration-race—we have identified by analysing previous literature from the field. For instance, the race/migration axis appears central in the nativist discourses of far-right parties; while the religion/secularism axis is crucial in the discourse of religious actors, such as the Spanish Catholic Church, and Swedish intellectuals, e.g. the portrayal of Sweden as a secular nation.

We review the academic literature on anti-gender in each country and identify 1) the main tropes of anti-gender actors regarding the construction of the nation through the gender equality lenses, and 2) the key role that the axes of religion/secularism and race/migration play in the construction of boundaries of belonging and nation-making through a gender equality discourse. Our selection of texts from a variety of disciplines and interdisciplinary fields that have paid attention to this phenomenon, including sociology, gender studies, political science, cultural studies, and anthropology. Criteria for the sampling of relevant texts included they provide an overview of the anti-gender field and the main strategies employed against feminist and equality policies and/or shedding light on the alternative gender knowledge constructed by anti-gender actors. In our search, we have used an intersectional feminist perspective to identify texts addressing attacks against LGBTQI* and racialized collectives, although parts of the literature tend to adopt a single-issue focus on anti-gender. The texts were identified following three steps: first, we identified keywords that could help us search for relevant texts. These words include anti-gender, anti-feminism, far-right, violence, democracy, knowledge, Sweden, Swedish, Spain, Spanish, Sweden Democrats and Vox (the search was conducted in Swedish, Spanish and English). Second, we searched the identified keywords on Google Scholar and other research databases and downloaded the texts that were within our research scope. Third, we identified further texts that could be pertinent to our study in the already selected manuscripts, through in-text references, footnotes and reference lists. After selecting the texts, we coded them based on the analytical categories that emerged out of our reading of the literature, such as race, religion, secularism, and migration, among others. After a preliminary reading, we identified gaps in our search and conducted two more rounds of text-searching activity (Korolczuk & Sältenberg, 2023; Lombardo et al., 2023).

Anti-Gender Boundaries of Belonging in Sweden and Spain

Inspired by Yuval-Davis’s notion of “politics of belonging” (2011), we explore the boundaries of national belonging in relation to gender equality in Sweden and Spain. The topic of gender equality has become crucial in public discourses in both countries, albeit in different ways. In the first subsection, we explore how the main themes and positions put forward by anti-gender actors in Sweden and Spain respond to dominant national discourses around gender equality, what we call the nation-gender equality nexus. Then, in the following two subsections, we discuss how these discourses are articulated through the categories of race-migration and religion-secularism.

The Nation-Gender Equality Nexus

In the case of Sweden, the national self-image has to a large degree (at least up until recently), been crafted on a notion of Swedish exceptionalism, closely tied to ideals of a secular modernity. Unlike many other countries, where national cohesion builds on the myth of a common and often glorious past, notions of “Swedishness” on the contrary, rely on the idea of being a modern, and even the most modern nation (Habel, 2011; Ruth, 1984; Sältenberg, 2022; Schierup & Ålund, 2011). This is a modernity which, in hegemonic discourses, is understood to be secular and rational, and during decades also linked to the social democratic welfare idea of the “people’s home” (folkhemmet) (Mulinari & Lundqvist, 2017) as a national project.

The self-image of Sweden as a modern, rational, progressive—including gender-equal and gay-friendly—nation shapes the discourses of anti-gender actors (Gunnarsson Payne & Korolczuk, 2021; Lagerman, 2023). For example, the main topics of anti-gender actors in recent years have not been restraining women’s or LGB people’s legal rights, but have instead focused on knowledge production and trans rights. These actors promote a debate on the so-called “gender theory” to criticize gender studies as an academic discipline (as well as the broad tradition of critical theory at large) for being “political” and hence not being scientific enough (Martinsson, 2022), gender mainstreaming policies in the academy for acting like an “overchurch” and thus as a threat against academic freedom (Arpi & Wyndhamn, 2020; Johansson Wilen, 2024; Martinsson, 2020), and gender pedagogy in kindergartens for ideological indoctrination (Westerlund, 2021). The anti-gender debate in relation to trans rights, on the other hand, depicts reforms for trans rights as being “ideological” or “fashionable”—that is, once again not scientific or rational enough—and for harming under-aged trans people who are not considered mature enough to take decisions on gender-confirming treatment (Alm & Lund Engbretsen, 2020). Certain medicalized discourse, problematizing the minors’ access to gender-affirming care, reinforces the depiction of the trans struggle as non-scientific and hence non-rational (Jemsby & Mattisson, 2024). In relation to this, anti-gender actors also attack drag queens, particularly in relation to the reading of books in public libraries (“drag story hour”), again arguing that this constitutes ideological indoctrination of children (SVT Nyheter, 2022). All these anti-gender campaigns highlight rationality, science and human rights (Johansson Wilen et al., 2021), which also constitute important tenets of Western modernity.

In the Spanish case, the connection between gender equality and the nation became a highly polarized and politicized issue (Alcaide Lara, 2022). While feminism gained certain hegemony in the last two decades, with the institutionalization of gender equality policies during the 2004–2011 Socialist party governments (Bustelo, 2016) and the cycle of feminist movements mobilizations that started in 2016 (Campillo, 2019), it is perceived as monopolized by the left, particularly by the Socialist Party and Podemos (Alabao, 2022). In this context, the most impactful anti-gender actor in recent years, the far-right party Vox—the third national force since the 2019 national elections–, has instrumentalized the conversation around gender equality, seeking to re-signify gender equality efforts and feminism within a nativist and femonationalist project that presents Spain as an already egalitarian society (Arranz Sánchez, 2022; Cabezas, 2022). It is relevant to note that Vox’s political discourse has undergone a significant evolution in the last 5 years, coalescing with the new visibility of feminism and the rapid advancement of feminist policymaking driven particularly by Podemos. In this context, Vox’s anti-gender position has become central in its politics with the dispute around gender equality becoming a central conversation in the Spanish public opinion during the 2019–2023 legislature. Attacking the so-called “gender ideology” and the “LGBT lobby”, Vox presents itself as a nationalist party that defends traditional Spanish values and conservatism against what it deems unnecessary feminist politics involving sexual and reproductive rights, policies against gender-based violence, and LGBT rights (Álvarez-Benavides & Jiménez Aguilar, 2021). They even invoke a kind of “ancient Spanish feminism” with a reading of Isabella the Catholic as female empowerment (Cabezas Fernández et al., 2023). Leftist institutional actors, on the other hand, defend the image of Spain as a society in need of gender equality efforts, while showing pride over the pioneering gender equality and LGBT laws they promoted in the last two decades (Carvajal, 2023). In this dispute over the construction of Spanishness in relation to gender equality, anti-gender actors reject the idea that feminists could represent the nation. In fact, they position feminists as Spain haters due to their alleged anti-equality stance that criminalizes white Spanish men—subjecting them to ideological laws that deny their presumption of innocence—yet welcomes migrant Muslim men to invade Spain and impose their sexist culture (Bernardez-Rodal et al., 2022). In doing this, anti-gender groups portray themselves as the guardians of the “good” and traditional family values through the national construction of Spanishness. This discourse is presented as a “common sense” rhetoric to expose the failure of feminist actors to represent the good Spanish people and their family values (Álvarez-Benavides & Jiménez Aguilar, 2021), and to re-establish the natural order in the face of a perceived crisis of moral values (Guinot, 2021).

Compared to Spain, the Swedish case presents a relative homogeneity regarding hegemonic representations of gender relations and nation, in the sense of a lack of strong counter-hegemonic discourses. Whereas in the Spanish case we can see the contours of two competing narratives regarding the nation-gender equality nexus, one with a more progressive stance and one with a reactionary discourse, this sharp opposition is lacking in Sweden. Instead, a dominant discourse of Sweden as a gender-equal country prevails. While this idea is based on a social democratic (and hence progressive) legacy, far-right actors seem to have adopted this framework. This is not to say that far-right actors are not anti-gender, or that there are not different degrees of progressive versus reactionary understandings of gender relations in Sweden, which the attacks on gender knowledge production and trans rights for sure demonstrate. Nevertheless, the duality of competing narratives around the nation-gender equality nexus that exists in the Spanish mainstream public debate—mostly regarding whether Spain is an already egalitarian society or not, thus, whether gender equality politics are still needed and whether feminist politics can represent a sense of Spanishness beyond partisan identities—is absent in the Swedish case.

Gender Equality, Migration and Race, and the Nation

Within the Spanish context, the praise of Catholicism as an integral part of the ideal Spanish national imaginary underscores the nativist tone structuring anti-gender discourses on migration and race. In articulating a defence of a true Catholic nation, anti-gender actors deploy a nativist discourse where a systematic delineation of the other is established based on race, understood as a proxy for religion. This discourse positions the migrant as a threat to Spanish identity, which is always racialized (Alabao, 2023b). For instance, Vox’s anti-gender positions in social media and parliamentary settings enact a racialization of sexism which is intrinsically linked to a nativist conceptualization of the nation (Polo-Artal, 2023). Despite its religious origins, the racial imaginary perpetuated by Vox has undergone a process of partial secularization and modernization. Central to this transformation is the emergence of a colour-blind argument, which privileges the protection of European culture. This discourse depicts the increasing presence of other cultures deemed “less” European, particularly those from Sub-Saharan African, Latin American and Arab countries, as potential threats due to current migration flows. Based on a premise that presents immigration as a relatively recent phenomenon in Spain, Vox advocates for an immediate halt to it (Rodríguez-García et al., 2021). The objective is to create a monocultural and mononational homogeneous national project for Spain based on rejecting globalization (Pérez Joya & Lozano Martín, 2021). An ethnonationalist stance, thus, structures Vox ideology. Although Vox’s nativism exhibits some secular tendencies, the primary target of its racism is the Muslim migrant community, which is repeatedly associated with terrorism, violence and radicalization (Cheddadi El Haddad, 2024). This discourse creates a racial order of a monolithically white (implicitly Catholic) Spanish identity in contraposition to the Migrant/Muslim Other (Polo-Artal, 2023).

Both Polo-Artal (2023) and Alabao (2023a, 2023b) frame this as a process of the racialization of sexual politics whereby the nation is represented under an imperative of protection from the Migrant/Muslim Other. The duty to protect the nation lies in men, constructed through masculinist notions of strength, heroism, leadership and whiteness (Alabao, 2022). This creates a Reconquista frame (Reconquest), which Cabezas (2022) explains has been a collective action frame of VOX since 2015. The Reconquista frame refers to the military campaigns that took place in Spain from the 8th to the 15th centuries, during which Christian Kingdoms battled and won over the Muslim Kingdoms established in the Iberian Peninsula in the seventh century. Vox capitalizes on this Reconquista frame of nativist patriotism to mobilize electoral support positioning Spanish identity against that of the migrant (Polo-Artal, 2023; Tardivo et al., 2021). Vox’s contentious anti-immigration stance has sparked a surge in social mobilization on the streets, often escalating into violent altercations and assaults on migrant reception centres, especially in regions where Vox has garnered electoral victories (Martiarena, 2019). Santamarina (2021) contends that Vox’s institutional propagation of racism, xenophobia, and colonial nostalgia engages in a dialectical relationship with street politics. This interaction manifests both discursively, through the shaping of political narratives, and physically, as specific neighbourhoods and local spaces are targeted by far-right groups to alter their material conditions and realities.

Similarly, in Sweden, Sager and Mulinari (2018) argue that the Sweden Democrats (SD)—an ethnonationalist and anti-feminist party and the second political force in the parliament since the 2022 elections—articulate a racist and nationalist agenda that portrays migrant men, particularly those of Muslim faith, as the embodiment of patriarchal values and the restriction of the freedom of young women and queer people. In this sense, the object of protection from this imagined Migrant/Muslim other (Reinhardt et al., 2023)—notably visible in debates on so-called honour-based violence (Keskinen, 2009)—is the Swedish identity and nationhood, produced through a heavily curated image of being a “women-friendly welfare state” and the “most modern and gender equal country in the world” (Martinsson et al., 2016; Mulinari, 2016). As mentioned above, “Swedish exceptionalism” (Sältenberg, 2022) makes gender equality a national trait and a marker for belonging (Fingalsson & Junkala, 2023). It should, however, be noted that SD has evolved ideologically and discursively since it first entered the Swedish parliament in 2010 (Blomqvist, 2020). While it formerly embraced a more explicitly patriarchal and anti-feminist agenda, the party now endorses the current Swedish legislation on abortion, says it wants to protect “Swedish gender-equality”, and its (male) spokesperson for gender-equality labels himself as a feminist (Granlund, 2022). Moreover, while the party used to be strongly anti-EU, today it accepts Sweden’s membership in the EU, endorsed Sweden’s application to become a NATO member, and a leading member of the party has publicly emphasized the importance of protecting “the West” also beyond the national borders of Sweden (Nilsson, 2024). Considering this, although there are differences in how nativist discourses are constructed in Sweden and Spain, a racial order underpins the ideology of both SD and Vox. In both cases, anti-gender actors understand and produce the nation through a femonationalist (Farris, 2017) sentiment.

Both the SD and Vox have strong anti-immigration and Islamophobic stances, which some scholars in the Spanish case interpret as a reaction against the migration crisis taking place in Europe and particularly, in Spain (Alabao, 2023b), but which also must be understood within the frame of the wider racial regime in each country. In the context of deadly European border politics (Schindel, 2022), Vox and SD set forth a patriarchal ethnonationalist project based on a racialized and gendered demographic fear of the Other. This fear is articulated in two interrelated ways: first, an identitarian fear of Spanish and Swedish identity being replaced by the other; and second, a cultural fear that this replacement of identity and values will lead to the complete erosion of women’s rights (Alinia, 2020; Cabezas, 2022; Pichel-Vázquez & Enguix Grau, 2021). In Sweden, this discourse is underscored by the narrative that Migrant/Muslim others are driven by “honour culture” where violence against women is a normal practice of everyday life (Alinia, 2011). In a similar fashion, in Spain, the perception of the Migrant/Muslim men as the violent and threatening Other is mobilized in the name of women’s rights (Fernández-Suárez, 2021), such as in the accusation of racialized and migrant men of breaking the egalitarian status quo in Spain by exercising gender violence (Cabezas Fernández et al., 2023). In both contexts, Migrant/Muslim women are victimized and portrayed as in need of saving from their own culture and men. Additionally, the total attribution of gender-based violence to migrant communities helps render other forms of sexism and violence in Sweden and Spain invisible, such as gendered segregation in the labour market or high rates of intimate partner violence, thus creating the illusion that they do not exist, at least among the white population (Keskinen, 2009; Wemrell et al., 2019).

Vox’s and SD’s discourses are articulated within a defined femonationalist and ethnosexist frame, through which racist and xenophobic public policies are promoted by appealing to the protection of an allegedly conquered gender equality in their respective countries (Cabezas González, 2021; Fingalsson & Junkala, 2023). This ethnosexism allows for an apparent modernization of the anti-gender discourse through a “parasitic-opportunistic appropriation” of feminist values, particularly of gender equality (Alinia, 2020; Bauer et al., 2023; Cabezas, 2022, p. 337).

Gender Equality, Religion-Secularism, and the Nation

The axis of religion-secularism is intimately connected to the construction of race and racial regimes in both countries. In the Swedish context, scholars have pointed out that these are partly overlapping categories, and that the line between notions of race, ethnicity, culture, and religion is blurry (Norocel & Pettersson, 2022). This translates into secularism being understood as a national value while religion is perceived as problematic, a dichotomy that relies on strong racial connotations (Sältenberg, 2022). The portrayal of Sweden as a secular nation means that religion is mainly understood as something problematic, backward, and dangerous, particularly when it comes to Islam, and only to a lesser degree in relation to other religious traditions, following an orientalist pattern of thought (El-Tayeb, 2011; Said, 1978/2003). It is relevant to notice that religion embodied in the Church of Sweden (Lutheran, and until the year 2000, state-owned) is perceived as far less problematic, if at all, in hegemonic discourses. Since secularism has historically grown from a protestant cultural context, protestant religious-cultural practices are always seen as less problematic for secular society than other traditions of faith (Brown et al., 2013). Moreover, according to Norwegian anthropologist Marianne Gullestad (2002), national identity in all Scandinavian societies is based on the importance of “sameness” (likhet), and an understanding of difference as threatening. Gullestad argues that the historical omnipresence of the Lutheran faith has been one of the contributing factors behind this sameness. In the Swedish case, this sense of national “sameness” and lack of conflicts is further substantiated by a self-image that draws on the notion of “200 years of peace” (since the loss of Finland to Russia in 1809), and the lack of foreign occupation, civil war and revolution during this era, as well as a strong social democracy for several decades. This construction of sameness also accentuates notions of Swedish secular modernity as gender-equal in nature (nation-gender equality nexus), and those (chiefly Muslims) categorized as “un-Swedish” as a threat against gender equality (Mulinari, 2016; Sager & Mulinari, 2018).

Unlike Sweden, and despite the dominant political discourse that roots democratic principles on laicism, Catholicism is still integral to the political and social landscape in Spain. The Catholic Church and other Catholic institutions receive public funding, enjoy fiscal benefits and tax exemptions (Martín García, 2020), as well as provide welfare state services and education at all levels (i.e. hospitals, schools, and universities). The Spanish Catholic Church also voices its position in public debates and policy matters, as reflected by the Spanish Episcopal Conference’s leading role in the first wave of anti-gender mobilizations (Cornejo-Valle & Pichardo, 2018). Spain was the first European country that witnessed, in the mid-2000s, the Christian Right massively mobilizing against gender and LGBT rights such as same-sex marriage, sexual education, and reproductive rights (Barrera-Blanco et al., 2023; Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017). Members of the Catholic Church hierarchy, and other organizations with Catholic connections, such as the anti-abortion Spanish Family Forum, Hazte Oír and Citizen Go, led these demonstrations (Cornejo-Valle & Pichardo, 2018, 2022). Afterwards, the Spanish Catholic Church progressively moderated its discourse and disappeared from the front line of anti-gender politicization (Barrera-Blanco et al., 2023). Yet, Catholic ideologies permeate the main issues addressed by anti-gender forces in Spain (Carreras, 2019). In defence of the heteropatriarchal family and traditional gender roles, Spanish anti-gender campaigns reclaim women’s choice of domestic labour and present Catholics as victims of a sociocultural system that seeks to break the social order destroying family structures and national values (Arranz Sánchez, 2022; Cornejo-Valle & Pichardo, 2017).

In Sweden, however, Christianity is seldom invoked in anti-gender discourses because of the strong connection between secular modernity and notions of “Swedishness”. One of the most salient features of this is that anti-abortion campaigns in Sweden are virtually, albeit not completely, absent from the agenda of anti-gender actors. In a country where the right to abortion up to week 18 of the pregnancy has been legal since 1975, and with huge public support for this policy, the SD has gradually toned down its initial anti-abortion stance and currently supports “the Swedish legislation”. In 2023, the parties in the right-wing government coalition and the SD even presented a joint proposal to inscribe the right to abortion in the Swedish constitution (Kristersson et al., 2023), mirroring the fact that anti-gender actors in Sweden don’t prioritize restrictions on abortion. However, the small anti-abortion groups that do exist in Sweden, like Människovärde and Människorätt för ofödda, emphasize the right of conscience of medical staff not to perform abortions, which currently is not recognized in Sweden (Selberg, 2020; Selberg et al., 2023). These anti-abortion groups primarily mobilize human rights arguments around the medical staff, instead of religious or moral arguments concerning the alleged rights of the foetus as in other contexts where religious institutions and discourses are central, like in Spain. However, this means that the role of the axis of religion-secularity is still at the core of the Swedish anti-gender landscape, but manifested in the form of (Protestant) secularism, emphasizing notions of scientific rationality instead of Christian faith.

In the Spanish case, anti-gender (and initially Catholic) campaigns on scientific rationality and knowledge production have focused on exposing the allegedly ideological dimension of certain epistemic positions. Catholic actors were the first proponents of the concept of “gender ideology” that delegitimizes feminism, gender equality and LGBT politics as ideological indoctrination rather than science (Cornejo-Valle & Pichardo, 2017). In Spain, Vox picked up later on this notion (Cornejo & Pichardo, 2022), not only to challenge gender equality laws, sexual and reproductive and LGBT rights but also to productively open a channel for social discontent (Arranz Sánchez, 2022). Antifeminism, initially of catholic inspiration, has experienced a progressive secularization displacing it from the religious frame to a cultural and political frame (Álvarez-Benavides & Jiménez Aguilar, 2021; Barrera-Blanco et al., 2023). The party Vox has been able to forecast an antidemocratic shadow over feminism and a moral panic over LGBT politics through self-victimization and a rhetoric of feminist totalitarianism (Cornejo-Valle & Pichardo, 2017), which legitimizes anti-gender hate speech (Cabezas, 2022). The ideal of the Spanish nation promoted by anti-gender discourses, although currently presented as a secular manifestation of “common” Spanish families and society (Barrera-Blanco et al., 2023), has profound roots in Catholic values and conservative gender relations.

Conclusion

This article explores the configuration of the nation-gender nexus through which anti-gender discourses (re)configure the politics of national belonging. We have argued that anti-gender actors’ rhetoric interacts with dominant discourses regarding gender equality and the gender regime of their respective countries, therefore always operating in a context-dependent fashion. This logic structures the specific ways in which anti-gender actors frame and discursively produce the nation, thus producing distinctive configurations of the nation-gender equality nexus.

In Sweden, anti-gender actors’ discourses are strongly based on femonationalism and the naturalization of gender equality, regarded as a core value attributed to the country and hegemonic forms of “Swedishness”. Anti-gender discourses, thus, orient their attacks against the perceived threat to the allegedly already gender-equal nation. This often takes aim at Islam, and by extension, the Muslim community, as the source of this perceived threat. Furthermore, the hegemonic portrayal of Sweden as modern and rational has led to the targeting of gender studies, gender pedagogy, trans rights and public activities led by drag queens, which anti-gender actors label as “ideological” or “indoctrination”. Consequently, these are positioned in opposition to the scientific, rational and objective values, implicitly locating them outside the boundaries of “Swedishness”. In that sense, anti-gender actors somewhat paradoxically make use of (Swedish) notions of modernity to challenge progressive politics.

In Spain, Vox and other anti-gender actors operate in a public sphere characterized by the prominence of feminist debates, consolidated gender equality institutions, and advanced feminist legislation promoted by left actors. In this context, far-right and anti-gender actors have developed an anti-feminist stance, depicting feminist positions as the main threat against the country’s stability and what they consider to be the true “Spanish identity” (Cabezas, 2022). Unlike the more homogenous construction of Sweden as a gender-equal nation, the public conversation on gender equality and feminist issues in Spain is increasingly polarized between the historical tradition of feminism as a progressive and leftist movement and right-wing values and conservative ideologies. This important difference between the two countries can be understood in the light of the different national constructions of Sweden and Spain: while the former has been based on notions of homogeneity and “sameness” (Gullestad, 2002), which along the twentieth century was entangled with both Protestant secularism and the social democratic political project, the latter has evolved out of the tensions that led to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s and the fall of the fascist dictatorship in the 1970s.

In the intersection of these contextual articulations of the nation-gender equality nexus, we found that two pivotal axes mediate anti-gender discourses’ national imaginaries. The first one is race-migration. In both countries, a nativist discourse is articulated through a femonationalist and ethnosexist frame that renders migrant Others, racialized communities and Muslim people as a threat to their allegedly achieved gender equality and national identity. The second axis is religion-secularism, with Swedish anti-gender actors praising (Protestant) secularity and rationality as an expression of Swedish modernity and Spanish anti-gender actors defending a traditional Catholic identity due to the culturally embedded centrality of Catholicism. This means that the category of religion is an important factor for the nation-gender equality nexus in both countries, although expressed in different ways.

In light of this, we show how anti-gender discourses do not operate in isolation but are in constant interplay with the gender and racial regimes and religion-secularity and religion-secularity in a given context. The interaction of the two aforementioned axes with the nation-gender equality nexus in anti-gender discourses leads to specific boundaries of national belonging and exclusion, across the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, religion and citizenship; rendering only some citizens as belonging to the imagined national project. It is crucial to emphasize that our comparative analysis focuses on two European countries. Despite differing gender regimes and traditions concerning gender equality, these nations share analogous imaginaries and anti-gender anxieties, particularly regarding notions of white Europeanness and the enforcement of border policing.

With this work, we seek to contribute to the conceptualization of the negotiated dimension of gender regimes (Alonso et al., 2023) by highlighting how existing gender regimes and equality frameworks, in conjunction with racial regimes and religion-secularity, can catalyse the (re)emergence and configuration of anti-gender discourses. In this regard, two salient points are crucial. First, while we have critically examined the national constructions of Sweden and Spain by anti-gender actors, it should be noted that many of the exclusionary politics of belonging identified are inherent to these constructions. Thus, the complicit role of feminist and progressive discourses in continuing these exclusionary boundaries should be acknowledged (Emejulu & Sobande, 2019). The relevance of the axes of religion-secularization and race-migration in anti-gender discourses on gender equality and belonging to the nation results from the hegemonic discourse on gender equality in the two given contexts. The dominance of white, citizen-based, and self-declared secular feminism and a single-issue approach to gender equality—which reflects exclusionary dynamics already in place—set the bases of exclusions across these lines. For instance, the implicit assumption of secularism in the dominant gender equality discourses in both cases leads to the exclusion of minoritarian religions in the country, with a high component of racialization given the centrality of religion for social constructions of race. The very limited presence of intersectional approaches in gender equality policies and institutions, and, sometimes, in feminist social movements, contributes to the hyper-invisibilization of non-white and citizen populations. Second, despite the recent surge of both global and local anti-gender movements aiming to reverse progressive legislation and feminist advances, the rights of some women, trans people, migrant, and racialized communities have never been consolidated or fully protected; in fact, they have always encountered significant opposition and contestation. In this regard, it is important to recognize that resistance to social progress is deeply entrenched in established power structures of the nation(s).

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the European Research Executive Agency of the European Commission for funding the CCINDLE project (Ref 101061256 Co-Creating Inclusive Intersectional Democratic Spaces Across Europe) through the Horizon Europe Programme. We would like to especially thank Mieke Verloo as the project coordinator, as well as the leaders of the project’s work package on “Anti-gender campaigns as a challenge to democracy” for their guidance and helpful comments, Elżbieta Korolczuk and Andrea Krizsán; and the PI leaders of the Swedish and Spanish teams, Elzbieta Korolczuk and Emanuela Lombardo. Silvia and Paloma would also like to thank and acknowledge the work of Alba Alonso, Laura Arranz, Alba Cifuentes Matanz, Esther Romero González, Lucrecia Rubio Grundell conducting the literature review and contributing to helpful conversations on the Spanish case. Hansalbin would also like to thank Eva Karlberg for enriching and stimulating conversations on anti-gender politics in the Swedish context during the process of writing this article. Finally, we would like to thank the members of the Gender and Politics group at Complutense University of Madrid for their feedback on an earlier draft and to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the European Commission [101061256]; Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship [101067130].

Notes on contributors

Hansalbin Sältenberg

Hansalbin Sältenberg is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Historical and Contemporary Studies at Södertörn University, Sweden. His doctoral thesis in Gender Studies from Lund University Anti-Jewish Racism: Exploring the Swedish Racial regime (2022) explored contemporary Swedish antisemitism from a critical race perspective. He is one of the co-editors of the edited volume Antirasismer och antirasister - Realistiska utopier, spänningar och vardagserfarenheter (2024). His current work focuses on anti-gender movement and feminist responses in the Swedish context.

Silvia Díaz Fernández

Silvia Díaz Fernández is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Political Science and Administration at the Complutense University of Madrid. Her research has explored the mediatization of violence against women, digital anti-feminism, and contemporary masculinities. She has published in journals such as New Media & Society, Journal of Cultural Studies, Empiria, Qualitative Inquiry, and Gender and Education. Her current work focuses on feminist politics, anti-gender movements, and processes of de-democratization in Spain.

Paloma Caravantes

Paloma Caravantes is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Political Science and Administration of Complutense University of Madrid, with the project Local Democratic Governance towards Equality (LODGE, ref. 101067130). She has published in Policy & Politics, Politics & Gender, International Political Science Review, Men and Masculinities, Critical Discourse Studies and Journal of Contemporary European Studies. Her current research explores processes of feminist democratization at the local level and the implementation of intersectionality and gender equality approaches in public policies.

Notes

1. We use the acronym LGBTQI* as an umbrella term to inclusively refer to the whole community. However, when specifically referring to legislation or mentioning rights, we employ the acronym LGBT since there are no specific laws protecting or guaranteeing the rights of queer or intersexual people in either Spain or Sweden.