Everyday femonationalism: hegemonic femininity and the enforcement of racial hierarchies between women

This article introduces the concept of everyday femonationalism to capture how discourses of women’s rights, central to femonationalist politics, permeate ordinary interactions. Drawing on 61 interviews with Muslim women who wear the hijab in France and Switzerland, we show how white women mobilise feminist rhetoric to discipline hijabi women’s bodily appearance and regulate racial hierarchies among women. These encounters reveal how hegemonic femininity, associated with whiteness, modernity and national belonging, is secured through gendered Islamophobia in the name of emancipation. By shifting the analysis of femonationalism from policy and public discourse to the interpersonal domain, this article demonstrates its role in sustaining intersectional domination and colonial legacies in everyday life.