Gender inequality discourse as a tool to express attitudes towards Islam

In order to promote their anti-immigration agenda, many politicians resort to gender equality discourse, often suggesting that national or European values should be protected against Islam that subordinates women. This co-occurrence of racist and anti-sexist arguments is striking because research generally shows that people with racist views and lower levels of egalitarianism tend to have more sexist attitudes. In this study, we use textual data to examine whether this co-occurrence emerges in lay people’s discourses and how it relates to their ideological positions. Drawing on data collected via an online questionnaire with French-speaking Belgians (N = 500) and using statistical text analyses, we investigate participants’ responses to open-ended questions pertaining to their conception of European lifestyle, the relation between Islam and Christian religions, and Islam and feminism. We find that participants with right-wing political orientation and higher levels of system justification associate women’s rights with European way of life more than other participants, perceive Islam and Christianity as more different, and perceive Islam as incompatible with feminism. They justify their views using gender equality arguments. In contrast, left-wing participants do not see feminism and Islam as incompatible and blame both religions for being an obstacle to gender equality. As a set, our findings confirm that people with right-wing political orientation and higher levels of system justification tend to exploit the issue of gender equality to promote their anti-egalitarian views towards Islam. In view of the widespread and normative support for gender equality in many Western countries, this phenomenon is particularly treacherous.