Between support for the Iranian women’s rights movement and opposition to the Istanbul Convention – Analysing discourses on feminist themes by the Identity and Democracy group under the lens of femonationalism

Abstract

In the ninth legislative period, the Identity and Democracy (ID) Group emerged as a central oppositional force to the European Parliament’s gender equality agenda. While much of the scholarly debate has focused on the group’s mobilisation of anti-gender politics, other facets of the group’s position on feminist themes have remained unexplored. For example, the group was very vocal in its support for the Iranian women’s rights movement following the death of Jina Mahsa Amini in 2022. To provide a deeper understanding of the ID group’s discourse on feminist themes, this article draws on Sara Farris’ (2017) concept of femonationalism. By conducting a critical discourse analysis of two cases, the debate on the Iranian women’s rights movement and on the EU’s accession to the Istanbul Convention, this article follows the critical aim of deconstructing the ID Group’s discursive promotion of feminist themes and highlighting its entanglement with anti-emancipatory agendas: the discursive Othering of Muslim and, more generally, non-Western people and cultures.