Mapping gender-based needs through academic narratives under right-wing populist governance in Hungary

Over the last 15 years, anti-gender discourses, the politicization of gender, and political attacks on gender studies have intensified in Hungary. Yet, limited research has examined how these factors have shaped the field of gender scholarship. To date, no review of the Hungarian academic literature on gender and gender-based needs has been conducted during the right-wing populist political era. This paper aims to fill this gap by addressing the following research question: How have academic narratives conceptualized gender and gender-based needs in Hungary under the governance of the right-wing populist party coalition since 2010? Based on a purposive sampling procedure combined with expert selection, we analyzed 67 articles published between 2010 and 2023 to represent the main theoretical approaches and empirical investigations on the multifaceted nature of gender-related research in Hungary. The findings indicate that the Hungarian academic literature on gender and gender-based needs has evolved significantly despite the adverse political climate. While most articles implicitly understand gender in its classical binary form as the roles of men and women and gender is predominantly understood through a constructivist lens in Hungary, the academic narratives continue to encompass a wide range of topics and approaches related to critical gender-based needs. The paper identifies both more traditional sex- and gender-based needs (such as those related to motherhood, fatherhood, the distribution of household chores, work-life balance issues, and combating labor market discrimination), in addition to more contemporary and politics-driven gender-based needs such as empowering women through civil society organizations, policies and practices for LGBTQ+ individuals, and the effects of anti-gender rhetoric. The paper concludes that policymakers should pay more attention to social science research, as scholars are actively mapping gender-based needs in the Hungarian context.