Populist politic is spreading his influence in Europe ‘disfiguring’ (Urbinati, 2014) moral and institutional bases of democracy, contesting any inclusive development of democratic citizenship’s borders. As a matter of fact, in many democracies so PRRs are strongly supporting exclusionist visions of democracy (Beckam, 2009), portraying a bizarre – but really worrying – profile of politically engaged woman, both as party leader and institutional representative.
New materials and symbolic borders are de facto internally ‘walling’ (Brown, 2000) democratic systems, normalizing PRRs’ exclusionist issues or policies, frequently with the support of large segments of voters. In many cases leaders’ gender is even used as a ‘protection screen’ by PRRs to communicate discriminatory contents on immigration or religion. Definitively, populist politic is broadcasting a disturbingly ideal-type of party or institutional engaged woman.
By which sides populist politics effectively impacts on gender equality? And, at last, which threats for gender equality are reflected in the PRRs’ policies of party leadership and institutional representatives?
Starting from a four-countries cluster analysis (France, Germany, Italy, Spain) on populist parties’ impact, the paper will evidence that the so-called populist wave is affecting structurally democracies with a defeat of institutional modernisation, particularly in countries traditionally affected by low standards of gender equality on political-institutional side.
After a theoretical frame on populist parties, the first part of the paper will present an overview on populist parties’ trend in the four-country cluster, also considering vote trends of PRRs by gender.
The second part of the paper will investigate new invisible or visible gender boundaries supported by PRRs starting from parties’ programs and manifestos related to sensible issues (family policy, labor market, other), to demonstrate that populist politics impact on gender (in)equality increases in country democracy with a former limits on representative threshold by gender.
Last part of the paper will present an overview on parties policies on leadership and candidatures by gender ratio, trying to match a profile of gender storytelling of PRRs; the aim is to highlight that these parties use a formally inclusive but substantially regressive policy of gender representativeness to contrast progressives conception of gender equality.

Armando Vittoria, PhD, Research Fellow and Professor of Politics and administration at Department of Political Science, University of Naples, Federcio II. My principal research fields are democratic theory, border politics and immigration, populist parties, post-fordist Welfare institutions, commons’ policy.

NO co-authors.