Expressing gender on the far right in France and Germany: A comparative study of the self-presentation techniques of Marine Le Pen (FN) and Frauke Petry (AfD)

Based on works in political sociology related to the strategic use of gender in the political arena and works in comparative politics emphasizing the role of gender among right-wing political parties, this article presents a comparative analysis of the ways in which two European far-right, female party leaders, Marine Le Pen (FN) and Frauke Petry (AfD), mobilize gender as a strategic resource. In line with existing works that identify the specific uses of gender by right-wing party actors—especially in order to circumvent or reverse the stigma associated with authoritarian, virilist far-right parties—this article intends to show that the legitimacy and the modalities of this strategic use of gender are constrained both by culturally ingrained collective perceptions about the legitimate expressions of gender in a given political arena and by the stand of intra-party struggles relating to the demarcation of borders vis-à-vis extreme-right movements and the relative strength of different, extreme-right traditions within the party under study.