In response to shifting gender hierarchies and demographic anxieties, authoritarian populists are pushing a ‘family in crisis’ narrative. Başak Akkan and Tuğçe Erçetin argue that ‘familyism’ ideology underpins pronatalist care politics aimed at restoring the patriarchal sexual contract.
The last 50 years have seen profound transformations in gender relations, signifying a gender revolution. The reorganisation of women’s unpaid and paid labour has unsettled the historic divide between production and social reproduction. This has rendered the family a key arena of capitalist contestation. The unspoken arrangement Carole Pateman called the sexual contract is premised on the political separation of public and private spheres, secured institutionally through marriage and family formation. The gender revolution, however, has put this contract under renewed scrutiny.
Welfare states have sought to mitigate these transformations through work-family reconciliation policies. Such policies include flexible labour market arrangements, parental leave schemes, and childcare facilities. Yet, in response to the shifting boundaries of social reproductive labour, these efforts have failed to deliver transformative care politics.
Although the gender revolution remains incomplete, waves of feminist struggle have at least succeeded in institutionalising gender equality within democratic polities.
The counter-narrative of ‘family in crisis’
The past decade has witnessed the rise of authoritarian populism around the globe. Illiberal politics, meanwhile, have mobilised a ‘family in crisis’ counter-narrative, drawing on anxieties about cultural transformations in gender relations. Feminist scholarship has documented the rise of anti-gender politics, which portray LGBTI+ communities, feminists and other liberal democratic actors as social threats. This cultural backlash is now converging with demographic anxieties, which cast declining birth rates as an imminent economic and social threat.
Over the past decade, illiberal politics have mobilised a counter-narrative of the ‘family in crisis’, drawing on anxieties about cultural transformations in gender relations
This right-wing counter-narrative even extends to the workplace. In her essay The Great Feminisation, Helen Andrews argues that excessive feminisation has eroded the masculine character of the workplace, harming Western civilisation. Such counter-narratives cast women’s increased presence in the labour market as an erosion of work culture and a civilisational threat. Indeed, the proponents of these narratives push back against the feminist transformations of the public sphere and against policies to accommodate women in the workplace.
Illiberal actors believe progressive politics have stripped the family of its role sustaining a private sphere reliant on women’s social reproductive labour. Consequently, anxieties are deepening around the weakening role of the family in delineating the public-private divide. This fuels traditionalists’ nostalgic impulses to reinstate the separation of a ‘masculine’ public sphere and a ‘feminine’ private sphere.
Authoritarian populism and family as an ideational frame
Armin Schäfer and Michael Zürn argued earlier in this series that authoritarian populism is a thick ideology emerging from the historical conditions of crisis in political systems. We contend that ‘familyism’ is a thin ideology that channels the social and political premises of authoritarian populism in response to anxieties about shifting gender hierarchies.
In authoritarian populism, family functions as a fictional entity and an ideological glue. This construct underpins populist appeals for collective security, a homogenised national community, and an imagined unified society. Through appeals to family, populist leaders thus delineate the moral boundaries of a substantive ideology in a moment of societal transformation.
Familyism is a thin ideology that channels the social and political premises of authoritarian populism in response to anxieties about shifting gender hierarchies
The ideational framing of family as a moral safeguard reinforces a demonising narrative around gender. Incumbent authoritarian populist actors deploy the family-under-attack trope in moments of crisis and political competition to undermine gender equality norms. They portray society – particularly women and children – as threatened by the demonised construct of gender ideology.
Authoritarian populism seeks to re-establish a societal consensus around ‘the new conception of common sense’. Its proponents articulate this through political narratives of ‘normal’ versus ‘non-normal’. Family is a locus of consensus. The family becomes not merely a vehicle for backlash, but an embodiment of masculinity restoring the patriarchal sexual contract.
The authoritarian populist response to fertility decline
Competing ideologies profoundly influence public policy. When authoritarian populists claim that fertility decline is an urgent demographic crisis, they legitimise mobilising the family for pronatalist agendas.
In their redistributive politics, ‘family’ is an ideational apparatus that delineates which citizens it deems deserving. Indeed, authoritarian populists use care politics to reinforce the division between valorised ‘reproductive’ citizens and the ‘non-reproductive’, who threaten collective security. In this framing, the people as ‘pure reproductive citizens’ – a homogeneous and morally unified community – becomes the sole subject of policymaking. Thus, those reproductive citizens emerge as the beneficiaries of the authoritarian populist welfare state. Childlessness as a conscious choice is deemed a liberal-left ideology – ‘the childless left’ – and a feminist invention.
Authoritarian populists use care politics to reinforce the division between valorised ‘reproductive’ citizens and the ‘non-reproductive’, who threaten collective security
Financial incentives for childbearing have long been a pronatalist strategy. Examples include the baby box programmes in Finland and Scotland. Yet, for authoritarian populist governments like those in Hungary, Italy and Türkiye, the ideational construction of the family as a moral anchor for collective security legitimises generous benefits for families with children. The more children, the more generous the benefits. In these regimes, the carefare state deems reproductive citizens deserving of welfare, and neglects citizens it deems undeserving. The state pays scant attention, however, to claims driven by women’s changing roles, such as the increasing need for childcare provision.
The gender revolution
The thin ideology of ‘familyism’ is at the core of these exclusionary family policies. Indeed, they project a ‘pure’ society of heteronormative households that confine women to the private sphere and social reproductive labour. The politics of care reinforces the public-private divide, instituting a renewed pronatalist contract. Authoritarian populism wants to restore the patriarchal sexual contract, and the ongoing gender revolution is its primary target.
We stand at a critical juncture. Can contemporary societies reconcile pronatalist policies with the goals of the gender revolution? Or will the authoritarian populist care politics facilitate a masculinist restoration? What can progressive forces and feminist alliances do to move forward and secure the goals of the gender revolution?
No.35 in a Loop series on 🌈 Gendering Democracy
This article was originally published at The Loop and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.