Anti-gender Discourse between “Cult of the Family” and “Traditional Values”

This study develops a feminist critical discourse analysis of the official discourse produced by the Ministry for Family Welfare and Demography of the Republic of Serbia, from its establishment up to the year 2025, spanning the mandates of three ministers: Ratko Dmitrović, Darija Kisić Tepavčević, and Milica Đurđević Stamenkovski. Manually coded, the corpus includes 616 articles published on the website of the Ministry in the News section – from the first one published on March 9, 2022, until April 16, 2025. This research contributes to the expanding body of the critical scholarship on the anti-gender discourse and its actors, while offering a fresh perspective by examining the language employed by the state institution responsible for population policy, an area that remains a central focus of the right-wing discourse. From this perspective, the analysis explores the official rhetoric on the crossroads of anti-gender ideas about the “traditional values” of the cis heteronormative family, stereotypical gender roles, and “great national” demographic interests.