Women's leadership in far-right populist parties

The subject of this diploma thesis is the rhetoric of women leaders of populist far-right parties and how they approach gender-related issues. The issue of women leaders in general and women leaders in populist far-right parties is a relatively new topic, which has not yet been studied at the level of the Czech Republic. This paper presents the output of qualitative research, namely two case studies, Giorgi Meloni and Marine Le Pen, selected on the basis of the method of difference (also known as most similar case design). The aim of the thesis is to analyse and then compare the rhetoric of the selected women leaders, with gender-related themes being the main object of analysis. Specifically, the topics of the traditional family, motherhood, abortion, surrogacy and the LGBTQ+ community. To this end, media outputs, video recordings of public entrances, election manifestos and posts on social network X are analysed. The timeframe of the thesis represents the period from 2013 to the present and coincides with the time span of the two leaders' tenure as party chairs.