Amid the tumult unleashed by the second Trump Administration that is global in its reach, its impact on the constellation of gender, LGBTQI and trans rights and justice has taken a back seat.
Yet, any form of democratic backsliding needs to be viewed through a gender lens that will show that gender is, in fact, an important nodal point through which rising authoritarianism is channelled. This is something we should contemplate on this Women’s Day, 2025.
Anti-gender ideology is a part of the backlash against progressive politics and policies that have gained traction since the 1970s. This backlash is aimed at rolling back women’s equality, the acknowledgement of LGBTQI identities, same-sex marriage, gender fluidity and transgender rights.
It is an attack on equality norms (including racial equality) and gender justice, with a specific focus on policing and restricting women’s reproductive rights and access to healthcare, as well as healthcare for transgender people and the restriction on information on gender relations.
Some of Donald Trump’s first executive directives in his first and second terms were to restrict women’s reproductive rights, making abortion now nearly impossible to access in many American states. This backlash is also mirrored in the overturning of the landmark court ruling, Roe v Wade, that legalised abortion in the US in 1973.
The concept “gender ideology” was used for the first time by Pope John Paul II, who claimed that a misleading concept of sexuality and women’s dignity and “mission” is driven by ideology also called “gender”. This concept was taken up by the Vatican, which has expressed itself on gender theory as a totalitarian ideology that is more oppressive and pernicious than the Marxist ideology, and that it corrupts young people.
Anti-gender is more than a resistance against gender equality, or women’s inclusion in politics, but is in fact a movement that is global.
This rhetoric of “anti-gender” has been taken up by evangelical/charismatic churches that have spread ideas in the name of anti-gender ideology that homogenise feminist theories and scholarship and delegitimise gender activism.
It also appropriates gender concepts to use against feminists, such as pro-woman, or feminists for life (pro-life), or changing pro-choice into pro-abortion. The influence of evangelical churches supporting anti-gender ideology has also become pronounced in Latin America and Africa.
The anti-gender movement consists of heterogeneous coalitions, including churches and rightwing political parties, but all with the aim to reverse gender equality gains made over the past few decades and to ensure a return to patriarchy, traditional family values and re-establishing the binary relationship between only two sexes (male and female).
Anti-gender ideology focuses on concepts like gender identity as being distinct from biological sex, transgender rights, comprehensive sex education (that they want to remove from the curriculum), and LGBTQI+ inclusion policies.
For this very reason, the Trump Administration has targeted diversity, equality and inclusion policies (DEI) at universities and other organisations for cancellation. It has also contributed to the delegitimisation of women’s and gender studies programmes, and queer studies.
The anti-gender movement can be viewed as a countermovement that is connected to certain conditions, such as the need to challenge power relations (women have too much power); feeling threatened by the values, successes and actions of the existing feminist movement; showing that it is having some policy success to obtain their objectives; and the ability to have political allies that can help in the provision of resources.
The danger for democracy is the stigmatisation of legitimate areas of human rights as dangerous, rejecting gender education and research, as well as a scientific understanding of sexuality. It also curtails civil liberties such as freedom of choice and freedom of association.
Where DEI programmes are targeted for closure or defunded (eg the US), it undermines or restricts academic freedom outright.
In Scotland, the parliament ruled that there are only two biological sexes: male and female, dealing a blow to transgender people. The anti-gender movement has gained political traction in many countries in Europe, as well as in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Chile and Peru.
In Africa, the circulation of anti-gender ideas has stigmatised any deviation from heteronormativity as “un-African”. Countries such as Uganda, Kenya and Zimbabwe have passed laws that have severe consequences for LGBTQI+ people.
In Uganda, being gay can be penalised with the death penalty, and people who know about people with lesbian or gay sexualities will be viewed as complicit in covering up non-traditional gender identities and also penalised.
Anti-gender activism across national borders has enabled anti-LGBTQI+ networks to collaborate transnationally with the aim of enforcing patriarchy and traditional family structures, confining women to traditional sex roles. It has politicised and weaponised homophobia in Africa.
Two of the main organisations that are involved in re-establishing the “natural family” through pro-family activism are the Family Research Council (WCF) and Family Watch International, with anti-gay and anti-feminist agendas, both based in the US. They establish transnational networks of conservative activists.
The WFC launched an International Organisation for the Family in Cape Town in 2016. It focuses on the heteronormative nuclear family to the exclusion of other types of marriages and the stigmatisation of same-sex marriage as adulterous. Their campaigns are well funded.
Their view of the African family is rooted in a nationalist view of the family that is seen as the building blocks of citizenship, and therefore is prescriptive of procreation for the purposes of nation building. Regional conferences were held by the WCF in Ghana, Nairobi, Kampala, Nigeria, Malawi and Cape Town (2017) on the theme of the African family and how strong families build strong nations.
Democratic backsliding refers inter alia to the curtailment of civil liberties and weak commitments to democratic norms, as well as the toleration of violence.
One factor that seriously undermines democratic rights in South Africa is gender-based violence, with some of the worst violence and rape happening in the heterosexual family. This situation will be compounded by anti-gender ideology.
We have to expose this anti-feminist, anti-LGBTQI+ and anti-African movement for what it is — a danger to democracy. DM
This article draws on research by Elizabeth Corredor, Melanie Judge and Haley McEwen.