Anti-Gender Campaigns in Poland and Beyond: Questioning the Symbiosis between Neoliberalism and Right-Wing Politics

Our analysis contributes to the rapidly developing body of work that examines the relationship between gender-conservatism and neoliberalism, one that offers an important corrective to the paradigm that links the right with pro-market views. We argue that anti-gender mobilization is a reaction to, and partly a form of resistance against, neoliberalism. Following scholars such as Brown (2019), Cabanas and Illouz (2019), Harvey (2007) and Gregor and Grzebalska (2016), we conceptualize neoliberalism not just as an economic doctrine and governance regime, but also as a cultural paradigm, a rationality permeating all realms of life and social strata. The core of neoliberalism is that economic rationality saturates all spheres of human activity, including cultural production, practices of citizenship and intimacy, identity and emotions. Profit-maximization and efficiency become unquestioned values overruling cooperation, democratic politics, social solidarity and the pursuit of justice.