Women’s Rights on Our Own Terms: The Gender Dynamics of Democratic Backsliding

• In Event: Research Frontiers on Gender Equality in Contentious Politics

Abstract

In recent years, it has been noted that leaders who seek to erode democracy also tend to use an anti-women's rights rhetoric. While research has been successful in examining this relationship across radical-right leaders, it has devoted less attention to analyzing how this phenomenon unfolds when it comes to left-wing leaders. Do anti-democratic leaders talk about women's rights equally regardless of their ideology? I argue that although left-wing anti-democratic leaders may seem more amicable to women's rights than right-wing leaders, they are nonetheless detrimental to women's rights as they will tend to vilify the feminist movement when feminism poses a threat to their consolidation of power. To test this argument, I look at Latin America, a region where democratic backsliding has come both from the left and the right, and examine how leaders from both sides of the spectrum talk about feminism and women's rights using text analysis. I make an important contribution to the democratic backsliding literature by examining its gender dynamics. Additionally, I provide an important insight into why left-wing leaders may be detrimental to the advancement of women's rights.

Author

• Alejandra Lopez Villegas