An ethnographic exploration of anti-genderism: ideas, identities and political practices in the Nordic region

About the project

Gender and sexuality matter in politics. The term Anti-genderism identifies a deep societal conflict in the challenge and resistance to the global expansion of women´s and sexual minorities’ rights, and the democratization of the family. It highlights political and cultural agendas demanding re-patriarchalisation and re-traditionalisation of both families, individuals, and societies.

The research team has crafted a novel interdisciplinary and comparative program, bringing together a solid conceptual frame on the nexus gender, sexuality and family, through a multi-sited ethnography, towards a systematic exploration of a fundamental paradox: the centrality of gender equality in the Nordic region and the successful establishment of anti-genderism coalitions at the core of the Nordic countries.

The aim of the research programme will be to analyze anti-genderism as ideas, collective identities, communities of belonging and political projects in the Nordic region (here defined as Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden) focusing on civil society organizations and networks, mainstream political parties and religious institutions.

The research questions are structured in four overarching clusters:

1. Emotions and emotional regimes;
2. Gender, Sexuality, and Nation;
3. Local, Nordic and transnational spaces;
4. Anti-genderism as a symbolic glue.

The long-term goal of this research cluster is to create a field of knowledge on the understanding of anti-genderism in the Nordic context.