Feeling the Nation. Romanian Nationalist Quasi-Feminist Women and the Road to Alternative Emancipation
Feeling the Nation. Romanian Nationalist Quasi-Feminist Women and the Road to Alternative Emancipation

Summary/Abstract: Member states in the European Union's Central and Eastern region are facing an increase in nationalist and populist movements that threaten their fragile democracies. As a result of democratic backsliding, provoked by the emergence of nationalist and right-wing parties that end up in Parliaments, scholarly interest has been drawn to the topic of women's voices and motives for joining this new type of politics. Right-wing nationalist parties are frequently seen as reactionary, conservative organisations that advocate patriarchal and anti-feminist values. In 2022, the Alliance for Romanian Unity (AUR) party had the greatest gender ratio of any legislative party in Romania, with more than one-third of its National Board and more than 22 percent of female members, making it Romania's most women-friendly political party at that time. What drives women to join this political party? Furthermore, how do these women reconcile their gender identities with those of members of a right-wing nationalist party? To address this puzzle, I suggest the concept of nationalist quasi-feminism, which explains how the party's nationalist and gender discourses are linked. Based on eight interviews with AUR women politicians, I argue that they engage in a bricolage of nationalism and cardinal feminist beliefs, with potential implications and effects on Romanian politics, such as the leveraging of women and women's vote in the AUR's catch-all strategy.

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