Graduation Year
2025
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Politics and International Relations
Second Department
History
Reader 1
Sumita Pahwa
Reader 2
Corey Tazzara
Abstract
European right-wing populist (RWP) parties are increasingly touting their attention to women’s issues and representation, and this has coincided with stronger electoral performances. Thus, the following puzzles emerge: how have RWP parties harnessed gender frames, issue salience, and women’s representation as part of a mainstreaming process, and through what mechanisms are these strategies resonating with voters? I address these questions by comparing France’s Rassemblement National (RN) and Italy’s Fratelli d’Italia (FdI), tracing their developments from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. I find that immigrants’ perceived relationship with the welfare state, feelings of insecurity due to terrorism, and RWP versus fascist ideological inheritance matter in generating femonationalist discourses. Secondly, while both parties have benefited electorally from strengthening women’s representation, certain dimensions of representation appear to have greater resonance than others.
Recommended Citation
McKinley, Meredith, "Right-Wing Populist Mobilizations and Gender: France's Rassemblement National and Italy's Fratelli d'Italia" (2025). Scripps Senior Theses. 2554.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/2554
Included in
Comparative Politics Commons, European History Commons, Political History Commons, Women's Studies Commons
