ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the construction of gender agendas in left-wing populist movements that mobilize for armed struggle. Feminist scholarship has highlighted how left-wing populism can produce homogenizing discourses that erase inequalities and difference. Examining the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, we argue that a ‘sameness’ position was utilized and contested by women in the movement during the conflict and in the shift to post-conflict. We develop a bi-directional approach that employs the concept of collective identity and allows us to examine the construction of populist agendas as a two-way interaction between the leadership of a movement and its grassroots supporters. Through this approach, we show how the gender dimension was not merely a by-product but central to the construction of the Maoist movement’s wartime ‘progressive’ identity, the fragmentation of this identity, and the movement’s populist appeal in the post-conflict context.
