ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes how the Front national and Lega Nord ideologies address issues of gender/sexuality, locating populist radical right (PRR) party framings within the wider cultural and historical contexts in which they have emerged. The chapter shows, first, how PRR framings of gender/sexuality are located within nationally specific discursive settings which, in turn, are shaped by national formations of gender, ethnicity and religion/secularism. In both Italy and France, public debates politicizing immigration, gender/sexuality and religion – where actors such as the mainstream right, feminists and the Catholic Church have intervened alongside PRR parties – have had a significant impact on the ways in which these parties mobilize such issues. Second, this chapter demonstrates that the gendered ideologies of the Front national and the Lega Nord have changed significantly over time. The analysis traces how framings of gender/sexuality have variously connected with frames of immigration and religion from the 1990s until today. Gender conservatism and authoritarianism have shifted as these parties increasingly emphasize women's liberties and the racialization of sexism, combining this discourse with a persisting traditional celebration of the heterosexual family. These changes in nativist framings of gender and sexuality correspond to and rely significantly on varying notions of religion and secularism.
