Women of the Right

Kathleen M. Blee is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh.Sandra McGee Deutsch is Professor of History at the University of Texas at El Paso.

“The wave of populism sweeping through Western democracies is putting women forward—Sarah Palin in the United States, Marine le Pen in France, Siv Jensen in Norway. Yet one knows very little about these women of the right, who are overlooked by existing research. This book is one of the first to make a thorough empirical examination of how and why they get involved. Through a feminist and multidisciplinary perspective covering a century of mobilizations in four continents, it reveals the complex interaction between gender and politics. Even in movements that see them only as mothers and wives, women don’t act or think as men do, and they find in their activism some form of emancipation and transgression, blurring the left-right divide. A whole new planet is opening for research on this unexplored dark side of female activism.”—Nonna Mayer, Centre d’études européennes de Sciences Po

• ContentsAcknowledgments List of AbbreviationsIntroductionKathleen M. Blee and Sandra McGee DeutschPART 1 TRANSNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE STUDIES1 Transnational Connections Among Right-Wing Women: Brazil, Chile, and the United StatesMargaret Power2 Exporting the Culture Wars: Concerned Women for America in the Global ArenaJill A. Irvine3 Memoirs of an Avatar: A Feminist Exploration of Right-Wing Worlds in SecondLife.comRandolph Hollingsworth4 Righting Africa? Contextualizing Notions of Women’s Right-Wing Activism in Sub-Saharan AfricaKathleen M. Fallon and Julie Moreau5 Gender, Islam, and Conservative PoliticsKarla J. Cunningham6 Women in Extreme Right Parties and Movements: A Comparison of the Netherlands and the United StatesKathleen M. Blee and Annette LindenPART 2 PRIVATIZING THE PUBLIC, POLITICIZING THE PRIVATE7 Maternalism Goes to War: Class, Nativism, and Mothers’ Fight for Conscription in America’s First World WarKate Hallgren8 From Suffrage to Silence: The South African Afrikaner Nationalist Women’s Parties, 1915–1931Louise Vincent9 Porfirista Femininity in Exile: Women’s Contributions to San Antonio’s La Prensa, 1913–1929Nancy Aguirre10 Domesticating Fascism: Family and Gender in French Fascist LeaguesDaniella Sarnoff11 The Volksgemeinschaft and Its Female Denouncers in the Third ReichVandana Joshi12 Mothering the Nation: Maternalist Frames in the Hindu Nationalist Movement in IndiaMeera SehgalPART 3 COUNTERING THE LEFT13 “It Takes Women to Fight Women”: Woman Suffrage and the Genesis of Female Conservatism in the United StatesKirsten Delegard14 Women’s Work in Argentina’s Nationalist Lexicon, 1930–1943Mariela Rubinzal15 “To Tell All My People”: Race, Representation, and John Birch Society Activist Julia BrownVeronica A. Wilson16 Leading the Nation: Extreme Right Women Leaders Among the SerbsCarol S. Lilly and Jill A. Irvine17 Dilemmas of Representation: Conservative and Feminist Women’s Organizations React to Sarah PalinRonnee SchreiberSelected BibliographyContributorsIndex