A Biographical and Family Historical Approach in Researching Gender and Right Wing Movements

Since the beginning of the 1990s, alarming images from the Federal Republic of Germany have been going around the world: pictures of right-wing teenagers raiding homes of refugees and attacking foreigners; brutal attacks, frequently with fatal results. Meanwhile, independent sources register about 200 fatal incidents of right wing violence.

Media and also academic research reports focus on male youths and men, so the impression arose that girls and women aren’t involved in the right wing scene. The consequence of this gender stereotypic few is that women are not recognized as political actors in the public field. By the media, authorities and researchers, girls and women with this background are not seen as actively contributing, as they are not as frequently involved in violence, compared to boys or men. However, this widely spread view is specific to an orientation, which diminishes female participation in right-wing extremism, leading to a misinterpretation and trivialization of their actual involvement.

In this presentation, a biographical case study on the participation of girls and young women in the right-wing sphere of the Federal Republic of Germany will be introduced focusing also on the strategy of the right wing groups infiltrating public organizations and spaces.