ABSTRACT

The European far-right has few women members, while the extreme right in the US has a substantial, perhaps even growing, proportion of women. This chapter shows how women's participation on the far-right is affected by the organization of national politics. Using life histories related by women members of far-right political parties in the Netherlands and women activists in white supremacist movements in the US, it compares the ways that Dutch and US women describe their entry to and participation in extremist politics. To describe the paths that women took into the extreme right in the Netherlands and the US, one use an explanatory framework developed by Bert Klandermans that identifies four stages through which activists move: investigating (finding out about the group and getting involved), socializing (meeting and hanging out with others within the group), maintaining (staying involved), and exiting (leaving the group).