“A mother is a mother, and a father is a father.” (Anti-)gender at play in the 2024 Romanian elections

We examine in this article how anti-gender discourses affected Romania's 2024 mega-electoral year, contributing to an ongoing democratic backsliding. Based on electoral programs and an in-depth case study of the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians, we explore the official platforms of parliamentary parties and the performative rhetoric of candidate-launch events. We operationalize anti-gender politics through five theoretically defined and empirically updated clusters of issues, ranging from opposition to gender equality and LGBTQI+ rights to opposition to sex education and gender ideology. We find evidence of discourse capture, with anti-gender frames being normalized and spreading across the political spectrum. Through a strategy of “democratic washing,” far-right actors published sanitized manifestos while circulating homophobic, transphobic, and chauvinistic messages via social media, thereby undermining democratic norms. At the same time, mainstream parties displayed contagion effects, marginalizing or omitting gender equality, women's rights, and LGBTQ issues. Romania's semi-peripheral and inter-imperial positionality, along with its post-socialist trajectory give power and meaning to the traditional / Christian / natural family, as well as to the colonizer and neoMarxism threat. Our findings show how the anti-gender discourse functions both as a domestic mobilization tool and as a node within semi-peripheral and transnational political projects. Our article highlights the Romanian case as an example of wider European trends. • Anti-gender shaped the 2024 European and national elections in Romania • Anti-gender became a heuristic revealer of the de-democratization process • Anti-gender enhances the advancement of new and broader anti-liberal strands • Anti-gender topics spread to the agendas of mainstream parties