Women in Radical Right “Men’s Parties"—Exotics with Their Own Mind or Just an Alibi?

Abstract

The author Brigitte Brück, who holds a doctoral degree in the social sciences, examines the positioning of women in leadership roles in radical right parties in Germany, France, and Italy, guided by seven interviews from the 1990s. The study is not only concerned with these women’s understanding of gender relations in the family, work, and politics, but also with broader topics of discourse such as migration, Europe, or coming to terms with the past. The author points out that the female leaders questioned approve of the radical right movement’s traditional, family centered and child-rearing image of women. However, they also plead for women’s increased participation in politics and professions. The publication offers detailed and complex insight into the image of the woman in radical right parties and into the political beliefs of their female activists—although, in the end, it stylizes those questioned too broadly as “feminists”.