Women, Antifeminism, and Platforms: The Discourses of Misogyny| Value Change Regarding Gender Roles and Backlash in Europe: Is Gender a New Polarization Element?

Abstract

In recent years, we have witnessed an increasingly visible right-wing populist rhetoric against gender equality across the globe, and this phenomenon has been explained and analyzed as a cultural backlash, which has pervaded political discussions and has led to polarization in political communication, reviving old debates on gender equality and bringing antifeminism. This article analyzes how attitudes toward gender equality have become subject to mounting global polarization. Specifically, it asks: To what extent are differences in the attitudes toward gender equality likelier to be related to ideological positioning in the present than in the previous decade? According to the classical theoretical approach, are attitudes and values still understood to be changing because of modernization? To answer these questions, we conducted a longitudinal comparative analysis of attitudes toward gender roles in European societies over the last 3 decades. We introduced specific controls for survey waves, gender, and ideology to test the hypothesis that the mediating effect of ideology on attitudes toward gender roles has strengthened in recent years, widening the gender and ideological gap on this subject.