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.