How do far-right youth movements use gendered arguments?

According to the European research project YOU-DARE, in recent years, far-right movements have increasingly used gendered arguments to promote exclusionary ideologies and endanger democratic values. This new research initiative, involving the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), will examine how far-right youth groups construct and mobilize gender identities and meanings, and how they use discourses to undermine democratic values and behaviours.

"Recent elections and surveys for upcoming elections across Europe show that much of the support for the far-right comes from young people, and from young men in particular. A qualitative analysis of this phenomenon, looking at which gender discourses are conveyed and how these fit in with other discourses, can help us to understand the spread and whitewashing of anti-democratic far-right positions which endanger acquired rights," said Professor Begonya Enguix, who is coordinating the UOC's participation in this European research consortium. 

Funded by the European Commission, YOU-DARE – an acronym for YOUth Debunking the gendered Arguments of far-Right Extremism – aims to examine the discourse that far-right youth groups engage in, by adopting an intersectional approach to highlight the complexities and contradictions of gender constructs in these movements.

A study involving eight European countries

The project will perform a detailed analysis to call into question the far right's simplistic views of gender, while exploring how traditional stereotypes about masculinity and femininity can coexist with the rhetoric of gender equality that it uses in anti-immigration campaigns, for example. The research aims to show how youth leaders, including online influencers, shape far-right gender discourses in a complex way, and to compare them across eight European countries – Denmark, France, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Sweden, United Kingdom and Spain – in order to understand how local dynamics are linked to global trends.

YOU-DARE not only aims to analyse and learn, but also to educate and prevent with the creation of the Open Policy Lab, which will design and test solutions to reduce the appeal of the far right among young people, by organizing training workshops and developing a platform for exchanging knowledge.

Four key processes

Although the project is still in its early stages, Enguix pointed to four crucial and related processes for understanding the role of gender in far-right youth movements. First, the researcher stresses the importance of the "feeling that there is a crisis of masculinity in its traditional form, driven by global crises, men's loss of their role as the 'breadwinner', youth unemployment, political changes and the failure to meet expectations for the future, among other factors." Enguix, the coordinator of the Genders in Transition: Masculinities, Affects and Bodies (MEDUSA) research group in the UOC's Faculty of Arts and Humanities, also highlighted the relationship between this crisis and some men's sense of "a threat and the end of the world as it used to be, the status men enjoyed, the privileges they had, and their special place in society." She said that "feminism and egalitarian gender relations can be perceived as a threat, and as responsible for the supposed crisis of masculinity" and pointed out that the result is a "male sense of victimhood that is now becoming a political position which polarizes society between elites and the people, between victimizers and victims, between feminism and anti-feminism, and between the guilty and the innocent."

She also stressed that "in the project, we are working based on the idea that the increased reach of social media has seen predominant discourses circulate,albeit with some specific local characteristics. In the case of Spain, and bearing in mind that the project has only just begun, the hypothesis is that issues related to gender and men's involvement in achieving equality seem to be strongly consolidated in society. According to studies, including the report on gender stereotypes by Spain's Sociological Research Centre (CIS) in 2024, men believe that both they and women must fight for gender equality as a democratic value."

Enguix added that the project also aims to "identify effective actions, agents and policies for countering far-right discourses and providing critical tools so that young people can resist the momentum of the hard right." YOU-DARE aims to consolidate an in-depth analysis of the far-right among young people in Europe, and to develop tools to counteract its effects.

United by experience

The YOU-DARE consortium brings together organizations specializing in the social sciences, gender studies, the far right and participatory research from all over Europe. Alongside the UOC, its members include the European Science Foundation (ESF), which is coordinating the project; the European Association for Local Democracy (ALDA); Goldsmiths, University of London, UK; NetHood, Switzerland; Political Capital, Hungary; Smart Venice, Italy; Aalborg University, Denmark; the University of Bucharest, Romania; Stockholm University, Sweden, and the University of Glasgow, UK. The consortium has extensive experience in research, policy design and community engagement for collectively addressing the challenges posed by far-right youth movements.

"We aim to research and expose the gendered narratives of far-right ideology and its appeal to youth, while providing evidence-based strategies to safeguard democracy and equality. YOU-DARE represents a unique research collaboration across disciplines and borders to generate robust and actionable knowledge for change," said the consortium's scientific coordinator Susi Meret from Aalborg University.

YOU-DARE is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme, under the HORIZON-CL2-2024-DEMOCRACY-01 call, with the grant agreement number 101178147.

YOU-DARE is funded by the European Union and contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5: Gender Equality.

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