This article aims to shed light on the forms and effects of anti-gender politics in a country that is widely regarded as being gender-equal. The empirical focus is on political debates and policy changes concerning gender equality and the rights of marginalized sexual and racial groups in Sweden between 2020 and 2024. The existing literature on the anti-gender trend focuses mostly on the discourses and strategies of ultraconservative actors. In contrast, we examine the perspective of gender-progressive institutional actors to gain a better understanding of how the political elite perceives ongoing change and the impact of this trend on liberal democracy. We conducted a thorough analysis of parliamentary debates and interviewed parliamentarians and employees of state institutions. Our findings demonstrate that anti-gender politics in the country is inextricably linked with the use of political violence and the further normalization of exclusion. Thus, we argue that struggles around gender in Sweden can be framed as a case of insidious de-democratization. This trend is defined as a set of relatively small-scale discourses and practices that further discrimination, silencing, and intimidation of already marginalized groups, and have gradual and cumulative effects of eroding the normative foundations of liberal democracy.

Gender equality and the rights of LGBTQI* and people of colour are being contested across the globe due to the rise of anti-gender far-right politics and movements that threaten feminist socio-political gains. In a nostalgic defence for a traditional gender order, these exclusionary politics articulate nativist, gendered and racial ideas of the nation. This paper examines anti-gender discourses in relation to dominant discourses of gender equality in specific national contexts and nation-making. We develop the concept of nation-gender equality nexus to account for the different imaginaries of the nation in relation to gender equality that are (re)produced by anti-gender forces through a comparative study of Sweden and Spain. We argue that Swedish and Spanish anti-gender actors configure nationhood and belonging through the reinterpretation of dominant discourses on gender equality in their respective contexts, identifying two main axes that articulate this construction: religion-secularism and migration-race. As a result, anti-gender actors produce different nation-gender configurations that lead to specific boundaries of national belonging and exclusion across the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, and citizenship.

I antologin Antirasismer och antirasister. Realistiska utopier, spänningar och vardagserfarenheter utforskar 24 forskare hur motståndet mot olika former av rasism bedrivs och förkroppsligas bland grupper av människor som på en mängd sätt, ofta motsägelsefullt, sällan framgångsrikt, men alltid envist och framåtblickande drömmer bortom rasismer. Antologin illustrerar antirasismens bredd, men analyserar också dess problem och svagheter. Inspirerade av bland annat anti-, post- och dekoloniala traditioner tillsammans med sociala rörelseperspektiv utmanar antologin ett statiskt och essentialiserande förhållningssätt som återfinns i forskning och politik och som har en tendens att betona ojämlikhetens stabilitet och oföränderlighet, även när det gäller rasism. Som helhet, utöver en mängd konkreta analyser och beskrivningar av historisk och samtida aktivism, visar de olika författarna också på antirasismernas möjligheter och kan därmed ingjuta ett visst hopp, i dessa mörka tider, för de som vill ha ett samhälle utan rasism.

In the book Anti-Racisms and Anti-Racists. Realistic utopias, tensions and everyday experiences, 24 researchers explore how resistance to various forms of racism is pursued and embodied among groups of people who dream beyond racism in a variety of ways, often contradictory, rarely successful, but always stubborn and forward-looking. The anthology illustrates the breadth of anti-racism, but also analyses its problems and weaknesses. Inspired by anti-, post- and decolonial traditions, among others, together with social movement perspectives, the anthology challenges a static and essentialising approach found in research and policy that tends to emphasise the stability and immutability of inequality, even in the case of racism. In addition to a variety of concrete analyses and descriptions of historical and contemporary activism, the various authors also show the possibilities of anti-racism and can thus provide some hope, in these dark times, for those who want a society without racism. Academic co-ordinator is Mattias Gardell, Uppsala universitet.