Faces of Female Populism

The success and increased influence of right-wing populist parties across Europe have become an established phenomenon in contemporary times. A more recent development that has caused public attention is the growing number of women in leading positions in such parties. Prominent examples include Giorgia Meloni of the party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), who became Prime Minister of Italy in 2022, and Marine Le Pen of the party Rassemblement National, RN (National Rally), who was the runner up in the 2022 French presidential elections, when she was defeated by Emmanuel Macron in the second round. Although the support-base of right-wing populist parties has been—and still largely is—dominated by men, traditionally called the ‘radical right gender gap’ (Givens, 2004), the share of both women representatives and supporters is growing (Weeks et al., 2022). In the French context, scholars have referred to the ‘Marine Le Pen effect’ that shows how, since succeeding her father Jean-Marie Le Pen as leader of the National Rally, Le Pen has managed to overcome the imbalance between male and female supporters across all age groups (Amengay et al., 2017). Indeed, today, understanding the appeal of right-wing populism is not possible without a gender perspective.

Although gender has not been considered as one of the major attributes of the attractiveness of populism in the traditional populism literature (e.g., Mudde, 2007; Stavrakakis, 2018), right-wing populism’s preoccupation with gender issues can be witnessed in many societal arenas, including advocating the heteronormative nuclear family and rejecting same-sex marriage, criticising gender neutrality, questioning sex education and even forbidding gender study programs in universities (Mikecz, 2020; Norocel et al., 2020). Norocel and colleagues (2020) term these parties as promoters of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ where the right-wing populists’ association between men and masculinities and power (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005) is entangled with notions of hegemonic whiteness and ideas of white racial superiority (Hughey, 2012). These ideological positions become realised in the agendas of right-wing populist parties through anti-feminist initiatives that, in addition to those mentioned above, include restricting women’s reproductive rights and opposing structural measures (such as the insertion of quotas) to support women’ equal participation in the labour market (Akkerman, 2015; Kitschelt & McGann, 1997; Norocel et al., 2020). Saresma (2018) defines this ‘gender populism’ as a simplifying understanding of gender as a ‘natural’, essentially dichotomous order, based on positioning both women and men in hierarchical locations in terms of power.

Given the above, how women active in right-wing populist parties come to terms with the gender-sceptical positions of these parties becomes an intriguing question. How do female right-wing populist leaders position themselves as women and political leaders, on one hand, and as advocates of an ideology that is suspicious of women’s rights, on the other? One way to examine the topic of female populism is through the perspective of the ‘double bind’ for women in politics (e.g., Hall & Donaghue, 2012; Pettersson & Sakki, 2023; Sorrentino & Augoustinos, 2016). The double bind of the identity management of female political leaders—that of balancing between what has been typified in political movements and discourse around politics as hard, masculine traits on one side, and soft, feminine ones on the other—can be regarded as particularly delicate when it comes to female leaders in populist and radical right movements often described as Männerparteien, ‘political parties of men, by men, and for men’ (Snipes & Mudde, 2020, p. 2; Weeks et al., 2022).

In this chapter, we explore the notion of female populism in two European contexts, France and Finland. Both countries rank highly—Finland on fourth and France on fifth place in the EU—on the Gender Equality Index. However, the two countries differ considerably with regard to (their history of) gender equality, which makes them an interesting comparative context for the present study. Although the French Revolution of 1798 gave rise to liberal ideals of equality and democracy, only men were acknowledged citizens. Women were excluded in the private sphere until they were granted suffrage in 1944 (e.g., Landes, 1988). In 2000, a parity law was accepted in France that requires that women candidates constitute half of the electoral lists; however, gender equality did not advance, and women never constituted more than 6 per cent of the deputies in the National Assembly and 3 per cent of the Senate (Scott, 2004, p. 37). The French feminist movement has been criticised of establishing womanhood as a narrow homogenous social category and ignoring the differences and intersections of race, ethnicity and sexuality (Lépinard, 2007). This ignorance of intersecting inequalities has been concretized in the French feminists’ support for the law to ban veils in schools ‘in the name of women’s rights’. Finland, on the other hand, was the first European country to grant women the right to vote in 1906. Thus, a myth of being a pioneer of gender equality has over time become an inherent part of the Finnish national narrative (Ahonen, 2017) and branding (Larsen et al., 2022). However, in right-wing populist rhetoric, gender equality is typically described as having gone ‘too far’ and shifting into a domination of feminists over white heterosexual men (Keskinen, 2013).

These two countries provide interesting settings for the study of female populism, moreover, as the leading right-wing populist parties—the National Rally in France and the Perussuomalaiset, PS (Finns Party) in Finland both feature women among their highest leadership. Based upon our previous research on Marine Le Pen (Pettersson et al., 2023) and Riikka Purra of the PS (Pettersson & Sakki, 2020, p. 23), we here focus specifically on how these political leaders position themselves vis-à-vis their womanhood in their political rhetoric. By analysing their statements in social media during major political campaigns in their respective countries, we seek to increase our understanding of the mobilising appeal of female populism.

Managing the Double Bind

A vast amount of research has addressed the ‘double bind’ that female political leaders face in their identity management as politicians and women. This double bind requires women leaders to navigate their identity vis-à-vis the deeply historically rooted alliance between the image of masculinity and leadership characterised by assertiveness, toughness and power and the stereotypical norms and traits associated with femininity, such as softness, compassion and emotionality. These deeply ingrained cultural norms place female political leaders in a lose-lose situation (Jamieson, 1995): being ‘too feminine’ may make them appear to the public as ill-suited to handle more masculine policy arenas, such as the economy and military affairs, but attempting to appear masculine and ‘tough’, for instance through rhetoric or attire, may be equally detrimental (Donaghue, 2015; Harp et al., 2016). In public discourse, women politicians who seek to navigate the double bind between femininity and competence are oftentimes criticised and accused of ‘playing the gender card’, that is, of drawing attention to their gender in their rhetoric to gain political advantage (e.g., Falk, 2013; Sorrentino & Augoustinos, 2016). This ‘female strategy’ is typically portrayed as a self‐serving and disingenuous political tactic that confers upon women an unfair advantage (Donaghue, 2015; Worth et al., 2016).

Some recent studies have raised the question of whether the double bind concerns all women leaders equally (Bast et al., 2022; Snipes & Mudde, 2020). Contrary to the double bind assumption, Snipes and Mudde (2020) found that the harder populist radical right frame dominated the softer gender frame in media portrayals of Marine Le Pen in two French and two US mainstream newspapers. Thus, in this case, the existence of a softer feminine side did not undermine the dominant image of Le Pen as a competent and strong politician. In a similar vein, Bast and colleagues (Bast et al., 2022) suggested that the double bind may not be relevant for right-wing populist politicians. Their investigation of Instagram posts of leading European right-wing populists showed great similarity in the communication strategies of male and female right-wing populists, both emphasising their professional roles and hardly ever their private lives. Based on their subsequent online experiment investigating how voters evaluated these images, Bast and colleagues (2022) furthermore suggested that a greater emphasis on feminine traits does not necessarily harm female populist leaders. Importantly then, from the perspective of the double bind of women’s political leadership, these findings demonstrate that women politicians are not a unanimous group but possess a significant degree of agency in constructing their self-representation, which can turn their gender into an asset (Snipes & Mudde, 2020).

For example, Geva (2020) proposes that Marine Le Pen has successfully managed to navigate the double bind in the political realm by combining hegemonic masculinity with hegemonic femininity, an ‘intersectional performance of femininity and of heterosexuality, where women who perform hegemonic femininity reproduce hierarchies of race, sexuality, gender and class; and, at the same time, reproduce masculine domination over women’ (Geva, 2020, p. 6). Taking the role of the ‘mother of the nation’ provides a way to manage the double bind as it allows to combine feminine traits related to caring and emotions with masculine protective toughness and power. Geva’s (2020) analysis of Le Pen and her followers shows how ‘gendered symbolism’—that allowed to portray herself as a daughter, mother, warrior, maiden, seductress, captain and commander; Joan of Arc, Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles de Gaulle—furnished the means through which Le Pen was perceived as representing ‘the people’, and as fighting the elites.

We found a similar careful navigation between hegemonic femininity and masculinity in our recent study of Marine Le Pen’s TwitterFootnote 1 campaign during the 2022 French presidential elections. We identified the positions of the ‘punisher’ and the ‘mother’ as two extreme, opposing forms of a position as the nation’s ‘protector’. This allowed Le Pen to engage in a dynamic positioning between a harsh candidate who punishes ‘the Other’ and a compassionate and loving mother candidate who takes care of the nation’s children. In other words, these positions together enabled Le Pen to negotiate her gender identity and role as a mother with the ‘manly strength’ of a severe punisher. We argued that these contradictory and flexible ways in which Marine Le Pen claimed different positions for herself enabled her to speak to different audiences and appeal to millions of voters in the 2022 French presidential elections.

For Le Pen and other populist leaders, social media constitutes the central platform for personal branding and identity management, including the construction of gender identities (Spina & Cancila, 2013). Among other things, the ‘hybrid media system’ (Chadwick, 2017) provides a platform for female political leaders to use dissent voices and criticism addressed at them as a vehicle for mobilising support. In our recent study (Pettersson & Sakki, 2023), we showed how Riikka Purra used social media to fuel rival voices around her public image, allowing her to take a martyr’s position. In particular, as a response to Purra’s own tweet about the misogynist attacks at her by her political rivals and critics, commenters on Facebook and Twitter deployed arguments of the double bind and classic right-wing populism to construct Purra either as a fit or unfit politician, racist versus non-racist, patriot versus non-patriot and victim or culprit of hatred and misogyny. This study indicated that the double bind does provide a central reference point for evaluating the performance and competence of female populists, despite their own efforts to control their self-presentation.

Defending Gender Equality (Against Islam)

In the emergent literature delving into right-wing populism and gender (e.g., Dietze & Roth, 2020; Siim & Mokre, 2012), gender populism is characterised as a system that formally acknowledges equality between men and women, whilst at the same time ascribing these two genders as opposing, yet complementary categories that must be preserved at whatever cost (Saresma, 2018). This position contains an idea of variations in this gender dichotomy as wrong and gender neutrality as dangerous.

In right-wing populism gender equality is typically portrayed as a ‘fact’ accomplished in the nation’s past that is now under threat in the present by an ‘outer’ and ‘inner enemy’ (Sakki & Pettersson, 2016). Blame for the decay of traditional gender roles is placed on the ‘enemy within’, that is, leftists, feminists and the media (Norocel et al., 2020; Rheindorf & Wodak, 2019). Paradoxically, contempt towards feminism and women who embody feminist agendas does not hinder right-wing populists from presenting themselves as the most suitable defenders of ‘our’ gender equality. In fact, as Farris (2017) posits through her concept of femonationalism, racist and anti-Islam arguments can be expressed ‘in the name of women’s rights’, making gender equality a powerful tool for xenophobic political projects.

Right-wing populism’s preoccupation with gender is therefore most closely linked to promoting the exclusion of a racialized ‘outer enemy’, who is constructed as dangerous to ‘our’ women and girls. The discourse of immigrants as a sexual threat has been repeatedly documented in previous research on right-wing populist rhetoric (e.g., Sakki & Pettersson, 2016; Sakki & Martikainen, 2021). This ‘politics of fear’ deploys particular notions of border and body politics to construct national uniqueness and homogeneity as needing protection from the infringement of specific groups (Wodak, 2015). In this discursive realm, the role of the populist leader is to protect the nation and its people. As the identity management of Marine Le Pen suggests (Pettersson et al., 2023), in female populism, presenting oneself as a protector of the nation and ‘the people’ can be extended to ‘care-racism’ (Sager & Mulinari, 2018) that frames the exclusionary agendas as care and love for the family and community, and enables to present oneself simultaneously as a harsh punisher of the ‘Other’ and as a loving mother of the nation (Pettersson et al., 2023).

In the next section, we analytically explore the ways in which two women right-wing populist leaders—Marine Le Pen and Riikka Purra—discursively negotiate their womanhood in their political communication online. In doing so, our aim is to disentangle whether and how these politicians present themselves in their political communication particularly in light of their role as women and leaders of right-wing populist parties.

Methods

The social media material analysed in this chapter is drawn from our previous work (Pettersson et al., 2023; Pettersson & Sakki, 2020, 2023) investigating the rhetoric and public image of Le Pen and Purra manifested in social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as in political blogs. Both female leaders are active users of Twitter. In early 2023, Marine Le Pen has more than 2.8 million followers and Twitter is considered one of her main channels of communication with the public (Pérez Curiel, 2020). This also pertains to Riikka Purra, whose tweets in 2022 obtained most reactions among all Finnish MPs. In addition, Purra has been an active blogger, especially before taking on the leadership of the PS.

For this particular study, drawing upon our vast corpuses of social media materials collected in the project Mobilising Populism (2020–24), and here limit our material to cover the years 2019 to present (2023), as this encapsulates the timeframe (2019–21) when both Le Pen and Purra have been leaders of their respective parties and the front-figure of major national campaigns (the 2022 presidential elections in France and the 2023 national parliamentary elections in Finland). The blog-entries and tweets were selected through the use of keywords relating to gender (e.g., women, gender equality, feminism). The quotes chosen for the analysis below illuminate the central discursive patterns around these topics and the ways in which the two politicians located themselves within these constructions.

For our present purposes, we chose to focus on how the two politicians negotiated notions of gender and womanhood in these online environments. We must consider the fact that political leaders such as Le Pen and Purra have the support of their parties’ communications teams that comprise both men and women, which undoubtedly influences the manner in which the politicians communicate in their individual social media accounts. Nevertheless, both politicians have considerable freedom and take an active role in the production, contents and style of their communication in different online channels (Vasantola, 2023; Vinocur, 2017). Therefore, the material analysed here can be seen as reflecting the politicians’ genuine rhetorical style and discursive negotiation of gender-related issues.

A further caveat regarding the material analysed in this study is that blogs and tweets cannot be treated as comprising the same kind of political communication. In blogs, politicians have the freedom and space to articulate their messages and, using interactive features, invite the readers to comment on and discuss their entries (Baumer et al., 2011; Pettersson & Sakki, 2017, 2020; Sakki & Pettersson, 2016). For the PS, blogs were a central vehicle by which the party managed to reach out to and mobilise voters through direct communication, without the involvement of journalists. Blog messages by influential politicians are, however, oftentimes picked up by journalists and thus reach broader audiences through news media (e.g., Baumer et al., 2011). This also pertains to tweets (Jungherr, 2016). Whereas blogs were a central communication for right-wing populist parties some five to ten years ago, Twitter is now a key forum for these politicians in multiple country contexts (Pérez Curiel, 2020; Pettersson & Sakki, 2020), especially when it comes to the construction of their personal brands and (gender) identities (Spina & Cancila, 2013). In comparison to blogs, tweets are by default limited in their length and are characterised by forceful and emotional language (Törnberg et al., 2021). Although Twitter offers the readers the possibility to comment and retweet tweets by politicians, research indicates that communication and interaction between politicians and their supporters or followers on Twitter is scarce (e.g., Jensen, 2017; Pérez Curiel, 2020).

Thus, political blog-entries and tweets have unique features that set them apart from each other both in terms of the contents and style of the communication that can be transmitted via them, and in terms of the ways in which they engage audiences. Nevertheless, we argue that using both types of materials in this study can provide a useful contribution to the literature. Indeed, investigating different online platforms that, as we shall see below, are oftentimes directly linked to news articles and interviews in traditional media, reaching vast and diverse audiences, allows us to gain a multifaceted conception of the (self)presentation and rhetoric of the two politicians in the hybrid media system (Chadwick, 2017).

Our approach to studying the gender discourse of the two politicians is informed by work in critical discursive psychology, CDP (Edley, 2001; Wetherell, 1998). Combining conversation analytical and post-structuralist perspectives (Wetherell, 1998), CDP considers both the ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ levels of discourse. In other words, it enables the researcher to disseminate both the detailed rhetorical construction of discourse, as well as to consider its broader societal context. This also enables the researcher to elaborate on the social and political implications of the discourse, for instance, in terms of societal power relations and consequences for different social groups. Thus, this approach is particularly well-suited for studying online political communication as embedded in its surrounding social and political environment (Burke & Rowe, 2015; Pettersson & Sakki, 2020). Our application of CDP follows the analytic procedure that we have proposed elsewhere (Sakki & Pettersson, 2016), which examines the content (what is said), form (how is it said) and function (what can be the social and political implications of what has been said) of political discourse. In this study, we focus our analysis on how the two politicians construct their identities or, following the vocabulary of CDP, their subject positions in their talk. The concept of subject positions refers to ‘the discursive production of selves’ (Davies & Harré, 1990), or the flexible and malleable ways in which people locate themselves (and others) in their talk (Edley, 2001; Wetherell, 1998). In our present analyses, our particular interest lay in the ways in which Le Pen and Purra positioned themselves as women and political leaders in their online communication.

In addition to the CDP analysis, we consider the multimodal (visual, digital, verbal) construction of the political communication, as this allows for a more nuanced understanding of how different discursive components can come together to co-produce meanings (Kilby & Lennon, 2021; Pettersson & Sakki, 2017, 2020). In practice, we extend our three-phase CDP analysis with principles of multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) (Kress, 2011). The focus of MDA research is on different modalities (e.g., verbal, visual and sonic) and how they co-construct a persuasive argument that becomes more than the sum of its parts. The approach has its roots in social semiotics (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006), which considers how (political) communication draws from the socially shared reservoir of meanings (Kress, 2011). It provides tools to study multimodal grammar by paying attention to the textual, (the composition of the message); ideational (the interplay of multimodal resources) and interpersonal (communication with the audience) metafunction (O’Halloran, 2008; Royce, 2007). These analytic levels correspond to and may thus be utilised together with the three-step analytic procedure of the content, form and functions of verbal discourse described above (Sakki & Pettersson, 2016). In combination, thus, the traditions of CDP and MDA complete each other in a methodological approach that we call multimodal critical discursive psychology (MCDP).

Analysis

Through our analysis of the gender-related discourse of Marine Le Pen and Riikka Purra, we identified three distinct yet in many ways intertwined ways in which these politicians positioned themselves as (female) political leaders in their online discourse. The positions were (1) the strong leader for both men and women, (2) the protector of ‘our’ vulnerable women and (3) the protector of men. As we shall see in the analysis below, the construction of these positions involved careful and complex rhetorical manoeuvring on behalf of the two politicians. We conducted the analysis on the original French and Finnish material and translated the extracts presented below into English. When doing so, we did our best to retain the original nuances and meanings of the blog posts and tweet, including idiomatic expressions and linguistic elements as far as possible. For the sake of transparency, we provide the French and Finnish originals in the appendix. They can also be accessed through the hyperlinks provided in connection to each extract. Below, using illustrative examples from the online communication of Le Pen and Purra, we demonstrate the central findings of our analysis. In the concluding section, we discuss the common patterns as well as the differences between the two politicians’ discourse, reflecting also on the specific features of the French and Finnish contexts, and elaborate on the implications of our findings in light of the literature on gender and right-wing populism.

The Strong Leader for Both Men and Women

From the first subject position identified through our analysis, the female right-wing populist leaders presented themselves as strong leaders who represent women and men equally. In these constructions, Le Pen and Purra negotiated and downplayed their womanhood through various discursive strategies. The first example below is taken from an interview that Marine Le Pen gave for the French TV channel LCI. On October 24, 2021, Le Pen posted a link to the interview on her Twitter account:

Extract 1, Le Pen: interview with LCI, posted on Twitter on 24 October 2021: https://twitter.com/mlp_officiel/status/1452330927116464128

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J: MLP I wanted to save you a few moments to talk about

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women. Do you want to be the women’s candidate as well, if I

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understand correctly, unless I’m mistaken

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MLP: no, I’m not, I’m the candidate for men and women

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J: but is being a woman, what you say, is being a woman an

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argument for you to vote for you?

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MLP: What is certain is that, because I am a woman, I am

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attentive to a certain number of issues of women in France

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today. And it’s not just street safety that I’ve talked about a lot

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and will continue to talk about. Because today, uh, a woman in

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a lot of neighbourhoods can’t walk around quietly at night, or

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during the day for that matter, as she wishes, dressed as she

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wishes, with the jewellery she wishes, without being the victim

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of harassment which is inadmissible

In the passage above, the interviewer explicitly prompts Le Pen on the matter of whether she is a candidate specifically for women. Le Pen’s reply begins with a direct denial (‘no, I am not…’, line 4) and states that she represents men and women equally. When the interviewer insists, Le Pen shifts her footing (Goffman, 1979), positioning herself ‘as a woman’ (line 7) and subsequently switching the topic to revolve around the topic of street harassment against women (lines 10–14). This ‘ontological gerrymandering’ (Edwards & Potter, 1992) enables Le Pen to select which topics to avoid (her womanhood) and which ones to emphasise (street harassment). Further, the position ‘as a woman’ allows Le Pen to construct a category entitlement (Potter, 1996): ‘as a woman’, she is informed and entitled to speak of issues that concern women in particular, such as street harassment. Although she doesn’t explicitly mention who she holds guilty for the problem, in her presidential campaign she repeatedly explicitly blamed immigrants and asylum-seekers (Pettersson et al., 2023), who were constructed as a severe threat to the safety of women. In our present example, Le Pen uses factual language and externalises her views in order for her account of the widespread street harassment against women to seem objective and grounded in facts (lines 10–11, Augoustinos & Every, 2007; Potter, 1996). The three-part-list (lines 11–13, Jefferson, 1990) strengthens the argument rhetorically, rendering it even more convincing. In sum, in the extract above, Le Pen’s strategic use of womanhood as a rhetorical resource allows her to resist being positioned as a ‘women’s candidate’, and functions to appeal to the broader electorate: to both women and men.

Turning to Riikka Purra, our following example taken from a blog-entry in 2019 illuminates how the Finnish right-wing populist politician negotiated the notion of womanhood in relation to her public image and the media:

Extract 2, Purra: blog entry August 2019: https://riikkapurra.net/2019/08/31/ylen-henkilokuvasta/

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When reporting on the PS, all hard-won

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positions – such as the fact that women should not be belittled by

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claiming that the men behind them are to be thanked for their

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successes – are forgotten. It is perfectly acceptable to claim in a

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personal portrait that a female person is not only a little crazy but

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also in her position by the grace of a man.

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…

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All my good or neutral qualities mentioned in the story had been

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turned upside down. These qualities are not good for a PS

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woman.

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The fact that I’m a vegetarian. Strange for a True Finn. (Imagine

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that in 2019, someone who considers himself progressive lives in

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such darkness as that journalist. About food! I have no need to

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turn my diet into a personal identity.)

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The fact that I focus on talking about facts and don’t ramble on. I

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am silent and invisible. The fact that I have good self-esteem and

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am not afraid of journalists. I am arrogant and confusing.

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…

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It is perhaps especially scary that the PS have

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relatable female characters. Only by increasing our female

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support, even moderately, would we be completely sovereign on

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the Finnish political map, because our male support is already so great.

In the extract above, where Purra discusses a recent article about her by the Finnish Broadcasting Company Yle, she explicitly debates the issue of being a woman in the PS and how this was framed in the article. A closer look, however, reveals that she never refers to herself as a woman, but rather, she uses the third person pronoun (‘a female person’, line 5, ‘a PS woman’, lines 9–10, ‘relatable female characters’, line 20). Through this careful rhetorical manoeuvring, Purra manages to resolve a rhetorical contradiction: to not ‘pull the gender card’ (Pettersson & Sakki, 2023; Sakki & Martikainen, 2021) by emphasising her womanhood, yet at the same time, through the generic use of womanhood, to appeal to female voters who, given the party’s already firm support among men, would make them ‘completely sovereign’ in Finnish politics (line 21). Purra furthermore deploys the rhetorical tools of irony, constructing the journalist who wrote the article as inflexible and biassed when it comes to combining the PS and notions of vegetarianism (lines 12–14) and womanhood (lines 20–21). The use of listing (lines 12–18) further serves to construct the media as biassed and opposed not only to the PS, but in particular, towards women in such a party. In this way, the media is positioned as de facto opposed to gender equality (‘When reporting on the PS, all hard-won positions – such as the fact that women should not be belittled by claiming that the men behind them are to be thanked for their successes – are forgotten.’), which, in turn, serves to position Purra as a promotor of women’s equal participation in politics. Purra makes a similar rhetorical manoeuvre in relation to her vegetarianism (lines 12–14). On one hand, Purra criticises the media for questioning this choice due to her membership in the PS, which allows her to appeal to various constituencies, such as urban, environmentally concerned and younger generations of voters. On the other, her emphasis on not ‘turning her diet into an identity’ (line 14) allows her to distance herself from values attached to vegetarianism, thus simultaneously catering to more traditional PS voters. Thus, Purra paints a portrait of herself as someone is self-confident (lines 16–17) and who holds on to her political ambitions, her achievements as a woman, and her dietary choices in spite of the media’s bias towards her, which allows her to appear brave and competent. In sum, and reminiscent of what we saw in the case of Le Pen in Extract 1 above, through careful rhetorical management of the double bind between femininity and competence, and notion of womanhood—neither denying nor emphasising it—Purra manages to position herself not as a women’s candidate specifically, but as a strong leader for men and women alike.

Protector of ‘Our’ Vulnerable Women

In contrast to the position discussed above, in the second one examined here, the politicians claimed a rather different position for themselves: that of an explicit protector of women. Here, ‘our’ (French or Finnish) women were positioned as vulnerable and in need of protection due above all to the influence of Islam in society. An example is provided in Extract 3 below, which illuminates Le Pen’s rhetorical focus on the issue of sexual harassment and rape on behalf of foreigners:

Extract 3, Le Pen: tweet on 5 September 2021: https://twitter.com/mlp_officiel/status/1434564812932100101?lang=zh-Hant

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Everything in the case of the young Shaïna who was raped, assaulted

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and then burned alive in #Creil, reveals the Talibanization of certain

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neighborhoods in our country.

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Mass immigration has the corollary of communitarianism and the

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terrifying decline of women’s rights

A close-up of a smartphone displays a photo of a woman on a rocky beach with the ocean and the sky in the background. The smartphone is placed on top of a textured, golden-embroidered cloth.

In the tweet above from September 2021, Le Pen engages in an emotional narrative about the ‘young Shaïna’ who had become a victim of brutal rape and murder in the commune of Creil. Further, she uses factual, externalising language (‘reveals the Talibanization’, line 2) and deploys a hyperbole (‘the terrifying decline of women’s rights, line 5). The picture below the text, taken from Le Monde, shows a cell phone with an image, supposedly of the girl in question, placed on a silk canvas. Taking a selfie on a sunny beach and smiling into the camera, the image displays an air of happiness and light. At the same time, however, through the image of the phone lying on the canvas, the girl appears lonely and vulnerable. In this way, the text and image of the tweet co-contextualise each other, that is, they reinforce each other’s meaning potential (Liu & O’Halloran, 2009). In particular, the visual component serves to contribute to the multimodal construction of the tweet: that of the threat that mass-immigration in general and Islam in particular poses to the liberal values and rights of French society and of women, in particular, (re)producing the ideology of femonationalism (Farris, 2017). For Le Pen, in turn, the tweet enables her to claim a position as the defender and protector of ‘our women’ against such external threats.

Apart from the topic of sexual harassment and rape, another common focus of the two politicians’ talk was that of the Muslim headscarf, which was typically constructed as the symbol of the threat of Islam and its suppression of women. In her 2022 presidential campaign, for example, Le Pen made it a point to explicitly ban the veil, should she be elected president: The government is drowning in its contradictions on the Islamic veil, a symbol of women’s submission contrary to French values. President, it will be clear: no veil in sport, no veil in university, no veil in work and no veil in the street (tweet on February 11, 2021). A similar pattern can be discerned in Purra’s rhetoric, in particular in her political blog, where she frequently returns to the veil as a symbol of women’s suppression. An example is provided in Extract 4 below from a blog-entry in 2019:

Extract 4, Purra: blog-entry 5 March 2019: https://riikkapurra.net/2019/03/05/maa-joka-taantui/

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It has never been unclear to me that there are cultures where women

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are inferior. I saw this already as a small child, I noticed, I wondered.

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Today I wonder, more and more every year, why all the women here in

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Finland are not as worried as I am. Do they really not know what they

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have achieved? Where is the perception of one's own community,

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culture, country; where is their knowledge about history?

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Hasn’t the extremely easy availability of information, travel and the

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shrinking of the globe shown that not everyone is like us?

A still of the product page from the M and S website displays a hijab for sale at 6 pounds. The webpage includes options to select the color, size, and information about free standard delivery on orders over 50 pounds. There is a quantity field and an add-to-bag button for the purchase.

As in Extract 3 above, also this example relies on the narrative form, yet here, of a more personal character. Through her account of her own observations from childhood to adulthood, Purra constructs a credible version of reality where, little by little, the Finnish ‘gender equal’ culture has transformed due to the influx of foreign, ‘less advanced’ cultures. The narrative is replete with rhetorical questions, which serve to invite the reader to co-construct and share its meanings (Pettersson & Sakki, 2017). The slow but certain decline of women’s rights and gender equality is further rhetorically emphasised through the multiple three-part lists (lines 2, 5–6).

The long blog-entry about the Muslim headscarf (see also Extract 5 below) also includes a visual component, namely a Marks and Spencer online ad for a hijab. Here, this digital tool works as a means of visual expression (Pettersson & Sakki, 2020) through its interpersonal function (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) and through communicating colloquiality, immediacy and ease: with a simple click ‘add to basket’ and modest sum (6£), one may purchase a hijab. The compositional elements of the image—the position of the hijab in the middle, the simplicity of the visual elements and the stark contrast between colours of the black object and its white background—call attention to the hijab as the central element of the message. Together with the text that constructs a dystopic future for (Finnish) women due to the increasing influence of Islam (lines 3–4; 7–8), this co-contextualises the hijab as a symbol of women’s suppression. The black colour together with the facelessness of the image object serves to strengthen the message of threat and danger (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006); thus, the verbal and visual elements co-construct each other’s meaning. Although the image is detached from context—the ad is clearly taken from a British website—it nevertheless serves as a powerful vehicle for the argument of the blog-entry: the threat of Islam, embodied in the black veil, is already present in our society, ‘one mere click away’. In sum, the strong emotional and personal tone of the verbal account and the relatable and familiar message (of online shopping) of the visual component function to co-construct the juxtaposition between the threatening, oppressive Islam on one hand, and ‘our’ liberal, gender equal Finnish society, on the other (Farris, 2017). Both extracts 3 and 4 illustrate how multimodal communication, comprised of verbal, visual and digital affordances, can serve as powerful vehicles for political argumentation and persuasion for a femonationalist cause.

A related discourse in the analysed material centred on feminists as the ones who are to be blamed for the lack of concern about the rights of Muslim women and their suppression due to the veil, as we can see in Extract 5 below:

Extract 5, Purra: blog-entry 22 September 2019: https://riikkapurra.net/2019/09/22/kuinka-kukaan-suomalainen-voi-sanoa-etta-burkini-on-vain-pala-kangasta/

1

As I’ve said before, I don’t dare to call myself a feminist

2

anymore, because the whole term has been rotted by

3

exactly these burkini defenders. But women’s rights really interest me.

4

One of my most important principles in politics is to ensure that our

5

country remains an equal and welfare society that respects human

6

rights. Unfortunately, immigration from certain countries defies this on many fronts

In the extract above, Purra constructs a personal narrative about her ideological journey away from feminism. The phrasing ‘I can no longer bear to call myself a feminism’ functions as a category entitlement (Potter, 1996): it positions Purra as informed and reflected on the values attached to feminism, which increases the credibility of her subsequent arguments. Indeed, she next constructs a juxtaposition between feminism that has been ‘rotted’ as a term due to the ‘burkini supporters’ on one side, and her own position as someone ‘really interested’ in women’s rights (line 3), on the other. In the following passage, she extends this juxtaposition between the ‘gender equal and human rights respecting welfare society’ and the immigration ‘from certain’, implicitly, Muslim, countries that threatens it. In this extract, thus, feminism, through its support of ‘foreign’ traditions of suppression such as the burkini, is constructed as de facto harmful to women, enabling Purra to position herself as a counterforce to this, and as a genuine supporter of women’s rights.

The Protector of ‘Our’ Men

The discursive animosity towards feminism was brought to its pinnacle in the final discursive pattern considered here, where we can discern yet another way that the two female political leaders discursively positioned themselves: as the protectors of men. Similar to what we saw in Extract 5 above, in this discourse, typically, political adversaries and feminists were othered and accused, on one hand of not focussing on ‘true’ women’s problems, and on the other, as male-hating, as in Extract 6 below:

Extract 6, Le Pen: tweet and TV interview, 11 March 2021: https://twitter.com/mlp_officiel/status/1370121268884869124?lang=en

1

“YES I am a feminist, but not a neo-feminist.

2

I do not express hostility towards men. We must build a

3

society of respect. Men are partners, not enemies.” #FaceÀBFM

Extract 5 above is a quote posted on Marine Le Pen’s twitter account in March 2021. It originates from an interview for a French television channel with Le Pen, which she also linked to in her tweet. In the interview, Le Pen got the question of whether she is a feminist. Her reply begins with a firm ‘YES I am a feminist’. However, followed by ‘…but not a neo-feminist’, this statement serves as a concession: she may be a feminist, but only according to certain definitions. Le Pen continues by explaining what she means by ‘neo-feminists’, from which she distances herself: women who hate men. She thereby engages in a renegotiation of in- and outgroups when it comes to feminism, stretching the boundaries and meanings attached to the term, thus strategically locating herself in this terrain. In so doing, she manages to express a women-friendly ‘pro-feminist’ stance (YES I am a feminist), yet, even more importantly, to distance herself from any agenda that may be disliked by or pose a threat to men. Thus, by discursively detaching herself from the ‘dangerous’ kind of feminism, and by positioning herself as someone who sees men as partners and friends, she manages to negotiate the double bind, avoid accusations of ‘playing the gender card’ and thus, to appeal to the male electorate.

Illustrated already in Extract 5 above, discursive attacks on feminism were a common trope in Purra’s discourse as well, as in Extract 7 below:

Extract 7, Purra: blog entry 5 March 2019: https://riikkapurra.net/2019/03/05/maa-joka-taantui/

1

There are very small girls in Finland who have to wear a scarf. In

2

kindergartens, schools, on the streets. There are unidentifiable black

3

sacks walking around the capital region, who can only be recognized

4

as human beings because they usually drag small people behind them.

5

In the library in Espoo, one black sack arranges books on a shelf. In

6

the library - our institution of welfare and equality.

7

At the same time, we feminists are concerned that people like me don’t

8

talk about things like this, or how the patriarchy of drunk, overweight

9

men is blaring too loudly, and something needs to be done about it!

Extract 7 is retrieved from the same blog-entry about the Muslim veil as in Extract 5 above. In this section, Purra expands the argumentation about the threat to Finnish society and values posed by the veil. She provides an anecdote about ‘very small girls’ (line 1) who are forced to wear a headscarf, and ‘unidentifiable black sacks’ (lines 2–3) that penetrate the capital area. The rhetorical maximisation (Edwards & Potter, 1992) ‘very small girls’ and the metaphor of ‘black sacks’ serve to emphasise the severity of the argument. Referring to Muslim women as black sacks functions to dehumanise them (Haslam & Loughnan, 2014) and enhance the image of Islam as suppressive of women. The image of the black sack as an expression of suppression and authoritarian values is brought closer to the reader by positioning it in the familiar context of the library—the ‘our institution of welfare and equality’ (line 6). In the final passage, Purra accuses feminists, first, of trying to silence people like her who dare to raise such issues (lines 7–8), and second, of focussing their attention on the ‘patriarchy of drunk, overweight men who us blaring too loudly’ (lines 8–9). This ironic formulation serves on one hand, to ridicule feminists and belittle their argument about the existence of patriarchal societal structures, and on the other, to position Purra as someone who is prepared to speak for men against the feminists who unwarrantedly discredit and attack them. In the extract above, in sum, Purra constructs Islam as suppressive of women, feminists as discriminatory towards men, and herself as a champion of liberal values such as gender equality, on one hand, and men, on the other.

Concluding Discussion

The yet scarce literature on the identity management of female right-wing populist politicians has painted a multifaceted and complex picture of the phenomenon. On one side, the double bind of identity management for women in politics—that of balancing between ‘soft, feminine’ attributes and ‘hard, masculine’ ones—seems, due to the parties’ patriarchal and anti-feminist ideology (Norocel et al., 2020; Snipes & Mudde, 2020; Weeks et al., 2022), to be a particularly delicate issue for women in right-wing populist parties (Pettersson & Sakki, 2023). On the other, research suggests that a personal rhetorical or media emphasis on female traits does not harm the public images of female right-wing populist politicians as competent, strong leaders (Bast et al., 2022; Snipes & Mudde, 2020).

The present study sheds further light on the findings in several ways. Our analysis of the online political communication of two female right-wing populist leaders—Marine Le Pen and Riikka Purra—demonstrates that topics related to gender and womanhood are indeed prominent in the two politicians’ talk. Both seem required to take a stance on issues related to women’s rights, gender equality, feminism and their own role as women in male-dominated parties. Yet, as our findings show, through skilful and flexible rhetorical work, the two politicians manage to turn these issues into their own political advantage and avoid the trap of the double bind or accusations of ‘playing the gender card’ (e.g., Donaghue, 2015; Sorrentino & Augoustinos, 2016; Worth et al., 2016). Indeed, both politicians build their leadership on professionalism and ‘hard’ topics such as immigration and criminality, whilst downplaying ‘feminine’ topics. For instance, Purra’s generic use of womanhood instead of personal womanhood (Extract 2) may be interpreted as an attempt to avoid the gender issue. Similar avoidance of womanhood was present in Le Pen’s denial of being a ‘women’s candidate’ and in her ontological gerrymandering (Extract 1), that is, her careful selection and mobilisation of certain topics around womanhood and the silencing of others.

Our analysis of the discourse on gender and womanhood of Le Pen and Purra identified three ways in which these politicians positioned themselves as women and leaders of their respective right-wing populist parties: first, as a strong leader for men and women alike; second, as a protector of ‘our’ women against the allegedly suppressive ideology of Islam; and third, as a protector of ‘our’ men against the ‘male-hating’ feminists. These positions were deeply intertwined with each other and involved flexible and malleable manoeuvring of the politicians’ own womanhood, which served specific discursive functions. Whilst not denying it, the politicians constructed their womanhood in ways that allowed them to position themselves as understanding ‘women’s interests’, yet nevertheless as competent and strong political leaders (Extract 1). Here, the media’s supposed criticism of their choice—as women—of political party was turned into ‘evidence’ of themselves as champions of women’s independent rights and equal participation in politics (Extract 2). Further, mobilising the discourse of femonationalism (Farris, 2017) and care-racism (Sager & Mulinari, 2018) the politicians constructed Islam as the primal threat to women’s rights, thus positioning themselves, through their womanhood, as protectors of women both against the women-hostile ideology of Islam and of the feminist movement that does not want to admit this (Extracts 3–5). In a similar vein, whilst not altogether dismissing feminism, both Le Pen and Purra built discursive distance from it by emphasising its focus on ‘wrong’ issues, such as hostility towards men and the denial of Islam’s suppression of women (Extracts 6–7). This careful navigation of their position with regards to feminism allowed the politicians to appear ‘decently’ women-friendly, whilst ultimately manifesting their mission to stand up for men. Our multimodal critical discursive analysis above showed not only the rhetorical strategies that Le Pen and Purra deployed in the construction of these positions, but also how they managed to utilise the visual and digital affordances provided by the online environment to strengthen the persuasive power of their messages (Extracts 3–4, cf. Pettersson & Sakki, 2017, 2020).

Although our findings show that the discourse on womanhood of the two politicians bore remarkable similarities, some discernible differences warrant attention. It seems, for instance, that, in comparison to Le Pen, Purra engaged more in a discourse of ‘victimhood’, positioning herself as an underdog and martyr vis-à-vis the media’s treatment of her as a woman in a right-wing populist party. This finding may be regarded as a matter of political style and strategy, and of the political discussion culture of the two countries. However, it can also be interpreted in light of the long-standing leadership position of Le Pen as a front-figure of her party, having been its president between 2011 and 2021 and having run for president three times, which has allowed her to secure a position of established political player in the eyes of the public and the media. Purra, on the other hand, has had a shorter and more sharply accelerating political career, having been elected MP and party president in 2019, which might have forced her into a more defensive public position. In other words, it may be that for Purra, managing the double bind for women in politics is a more challenging matter than for Le Pen. In addition, the national legacy of being a ‘pioneer’ of women’s rights and gender equality (Ahonen, 2017) has implications for political discourse in Finland. As such, the strong societal norm of gender equality on one side forces Purra to take a stance on the matter, yet it also serves as a resource that she can use in her political mobilisation to construct her p adversaries as breachers of this norm and herself as a martyr. In sum, this reminds us, first, of the importance of examining political discourse—including the rhetorical management of the double bind—as part and parcel of its surrounding political and cultural landscape (Sakki & Pettersson, 2016), and second, of not assuming that the double bind affects women active in politics equally (Bast et al., 2022).

Since the support-base of right-wing populist parties remains dominated by men, women are an obvious electoral target for right-wing populist parties when seeking to broaden their electorate (Weeks et al., 2022). In this chapter, we focussed on the role of two female populist leaders and explored their gender rhetoric. This, we believe, is important for understanding the increasing support of right-wing populism also among women voters. Indeed, our study suggests that engaging in femonationalist discourse (Farris, 2017) may serve as a strategic tool for appealing to feminist-minded voters. As this study shows, the crucial element in this endeavour is the way that politicians can stretch the meanings and boundaries of feminism as a social category to present themselves as the kind of feminists who truly cares for the concerns of both women and men.

Our study suggests that the double bind of identity management is indeed a relevant and dilemmatic issue for women in right-wing populist parties. This may be especially true for women political leaders in these parties, who due to their powerful and visible roles are forced to position themselves publicly regarding issues that concern women, women’s rights and gender equality. Importantly, however, we evince that the double bind is not necessarily a problem for these political leaders, but one that they through strategic rhetorical work can turn into their own political advantage, allowing them to position themselves both as ‘true’ promoters of gender equality, yet ultimately, as the voices of men. Social media, which afford politicians with remarkable control over their own communication and identity management, seem particularly important as vehicles for political mobilisation in this respect. Future studies should delve further into the question of whether, how and to which extent women representing different political ideologies are affected by the double bind, and how they seek to resolve it.