Institutionalising Backlash: Anti-Gender Frameworks as a Means to Justify Democratic Erosion in the United States

This study explores the increasingly visible relationship between anti-gender backlash, authoritarianism, and right-wing populism in the United States. It draws on backlash theory to identify anti-gender methods at play in attacks on the knowledge production sector. Focusing on executive orders made in the first three months of 2025, the paper argues that the constructed ‘threat’ of gender is strategically employed to justify anti-democratic action in the US.