Why gender?
Efforts to weaponize gender and sexuality are particularly effective because both are deeply rooted aspects of identity that shape how individuals understand themselves and interact with the world—and thus are both intimately sensitive and touch on myriad aspects of our personal, social, and political lives.
If authoritarians are able to regulate these most intimate aspects of ourselves, they have an inroads or a starting point for control at a very personal, foundational level. Gender also intersects with other identity categories frequently weaponized to divide, such as religion, race, and migration, further amplifying its power as a political tool.
The weaponization of gender and sexuality is part of a larger playbook that manipulates concerns about religion, morality, or “traditional family values” in service of consolidating power. While gender is not the only social category weaponized for authoritarian ends, it is a central one—and one often overlooked, misunderstood, or minimized.
Healthy and pluralistic societies are built on a diversity of views and beliefs, including on matters relating to gender and sexuality. We recognize that personal, spiritual, and religious values lead individuals to hold and advocate for different positions. In a strong democracy, such differences are met with healthy debate, rather than targeting, scapegoating, or discriminating against any individual or group.
This project highlights how political and cultural figures manufacture, deepen, and/or exploit divisions over gender and sexuality. In addition to directly harming and undermining the rights and freedoms of women and LGBTQ individuals, this also helps launder and legitimize authoritarian aims.
(En)Gendering Authoritarianism
Download a copy of this report on the (En)Gendering Authoritarianism project by the Democracy & Belonging Forum and Over Zero, to read later.
Leveraging gender through six strategies
Authoritarian populist movements leverage gender through six interconnected political and cultural strategies:
1. Construct a threat
Depict feminists, LGBTQ people, and "gender ideology" as existential threats
2. Normalize authoritarian ideas
Exploit gender to reshape the public's understanding of what democracy entails
3. Change culture
Rely on cultural strategies that leverage gender and gendered anxieties to reshape the broader political terrain
4. Build a big tent movement
Leverage gender to unite unlikely allies and broaden support for authoritarian movements
5. Divide and polarize
Frame gender as inherently divisive to polarize society and divide pro-democracy coalitions
6. Distract
Leverage gender-related controversies to stir outrage and divert attention from corruption and power grabs
Gender, Race & Migration
Authoritarians define the boundaries of national belonging and exclusion by connecting gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and citizenship, as is evident in now widely spread conspiracy theories such as “The Great Replacement Theory.”
The Great Replacement Theory posits that white populations are being deliberately “replaced” by non-white immigrants through higher birth rates and migration—often blaming feminists, LGBTQ people, and liberal elites for undermining traditional family structures and lowering native birth rates. In this narrative, shifting gender roles, reproductive rights, and gender diversity are framed as threats to racial survival, suggesting that only a return to rigid gender roles (where white women produce more children) can prevent demographic and cultural decline. This fuses racial panic with arguments about traditional gender roles, casting gender equality as complicit in the so-called “replacement.”
Still, in some cases, authoritarian populist movements are more flexible with certain aspects of gender and sexuality. This involves invoking narratives about protecting women and LGBTQ rights to build support for restrictive migration policies that reinforce longstanding racist tropes that migrants and racial minority groups are dangerous.
The Relationship Between LGBTQ Scapegoating & Restricting Women’s Rights
Efforts to restrict women’s rights and scapegoat the LGBTQ community are intimately connected.
Sometimes, political and cultural leaders pit women's and LGBTQ rights against one another. For instance, framing LGBTQ people, and in particular trans people, as threats to feminism and women's advancement. This is not an accidental strategy: authoritarians know that a united coalition threatens their power. In other instances, LGBTQ and women's rights are lumped together as a single boogeyman, often under the moniker of "gender ideology," that is said to pose a threat to a nation’s physical and cultural security, and the traditional family structures and gender roles that exist therein.
This provides cover for legislation targeting these groups, civil society and other checks on executive power. Still, in other instances, stigmatizing and scapegoating the LGBTQ community provides a pretext for undermining rights and protections for women—as with arguments against ratifying the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combatting violence against women and domestic violence because it purportedly "promotes homosexuality." Across these and other instances, gender and sexuality are strategically weaponized to extend state power, undermine independent checks on executive authority, and entrench a rigid social hierarchy.
(En)Gendering Authoritarianism
Download a copy of this report on the (En)Gendering Authoritarianism project by the Democracy & Belonging Forum and Over Zero, to read later.