The Far-Right, Gender In/Equalities and Liberal Feminism: Scrutinising EU Narratives of Gender Equality in Italy, France and Germany

The paper focuses on the question of what ‘gender equality’ means in the European context and how EU policies on gender equality might impact the success of female leadership with respect to far-right parties in Italy, France and Germany, appealing increasingly to some (white) sections of the female electorate in their countries. Female Far-Right party leadership illustrates a paradox between an individual image of liberal modern ‘gender equality’ while otherwise propagating gender binary and conservative populist agendas. Whereas some of the far-right populist rhetoric positions itself as anti-EU (e.g. AfD for Germany), Italian PM Georgia Meloni adjusted pragmatically to the European Union political scope since came to power in 2022. It is argued that socially classed interests of women in the different countries of the EU are neglected in public debates on gender equality, and the rise of the far-right is continuing with an embedded, normalised gendered and racialised class paradigm. This paradigm is approached while analysing closely Annual EU Gender Equality Reports between 2015 and 2024, tracing what ‘gender equality’ stands for, analysing what has been achieved and which areas have been neglected.<br/><br/>