‘Is Romania ready for a female president?’: Motherhood, nation and gender in the performance of women presidential candidates (2024–2025)

This article advances feminist scholarship on gendered political communication by examining motherhood as a strategic trope in presidential campaigns contested by women candidates in Romania. While research has explored the gendered double bind in electoral politics, less attention has been paid to how maternal symbolism operates within post-socialist, inter-imperial contexts. Drawing on a semio-pragmatic analysis of candidates' Instagram profiles, the study shows how Romanian women politicians mobilized motherhood to reconcile competing demands for femininity and leadership competence. By endorsing the traditional family and conflating familial and national imaginaries, candidates rearticulated conventional feminine traits—care, tenacity, moral rectitude—as markers of political authority. In a polarised political environment, maternal discourses provided strategic flexibility, allowing women to address both male and female electorates while mitigating ethnonationalist anxieties. The article contributes to feminist analyses of digital campaigning, nationalism, and the recalibration of gender norms in contemporary European politics.