A comparative study of the right-wing populist leaders Pia Kjærsgaard, Siv Jensen and Marine Le Pen
The two Scandinavian parties Dansk Folkeparti (DF, the Danish People’s Party) and Fremskrittpartiet (FrP, Progress Party) are today among the most successful and politically consolidated right-wing populist parties in Europe. Under the leadership of Pia Kjærsgaard, the DF was founded in 1995 by a splinter group of Fremskridtspartiet, the Danish version of the Progress Party (Meret 2010). Initially marginalised by the political establishment, the DF has secured solid parliamentary representation and broad support among the Danish voters over the past two decades. At the last election in 2015, the party received 21.1 per cent of the votes and became the second largest party in parliament. Pia Kjærsgaard, uncontested founder and party leader until 2012, is considered to have contributed strongly to the DF’s political success.
The Norwegian FrP originated in the anti-tax and protest wave of the 1970s. The current leader, Siv Jensen, followed long-term head of party Carl Ivar Hagen in 2006. At the 2013 general elections, FrP received 16.6 per cent of the votes and joined the Conservatives in government. Siv Jensen was soon appointed Minister of Finance. The two parties are illustrative cases for exploring female leadership, charisma and gender issues in the populist radical right. In addition, their political engagement and success challenges large parts of the existing literature on populist (male) charismatic leadership (e.g. Mudde 2007; Pappas 2011; Hawkins 2010; Mudde and Kaltwasser 2015). In these studies, populist charismatic leadership is usually synonymous with male charisma and is used as a major explanatory factor in terms of populist electoral breakthrough and support – past and present and West and South. Although the concept of leadership charisma is often vaguely defined, it tends to refer to Weberian-inspired categories (see Benedix 1960) assigning charismatic leaders exceptional qualities, strong popular appeal and rhetoric that can attract and persuade ‘ordinary people’ of their natural talent and qualities as leaders (Willner 1984). However, charismatic leadership attributes often refer – directly or indirectly – to predominantly masculine attributes: strong, warrior-like, vigorous, assertive male leaders. Scholarly, as well as non-scholarly, literature has a tendency to construct and reproduce gendered masculine approaches to charismatic leadership and underestimate questions of gender, particularly when it comes to women political leaders (Meret 2015: 85–88).
Pia Kjærsgaard and Siv Jensen challenge – each in their own way – readings centred on male/masculine populist charisma, and introduce interesting elements in an analysis of the role of gender and women leaders in populist radical right-wing parties (see Blee and McGee Deutsch 2012). The existing literature generally considers female leadership unrelated to charisma (see, for example, Mudde 2007). Until recently, only scattered studies have dealt with the role of women leaders in politics, often with a focus on historical analyses of the role of women and the feminine in fascism (e.g. Gottlieb 2003) or on right-wing conservative women politicians (e.g. Campbell and Childs 2010). In addition, studies of women representation in politics tend to refer to explanations highlighting context-specific and pattern-dependent opportunity structures that are believed to facilitate women’s participation in politics and consequently also their prospects of reaching leadership positions, as well as their representation by the media and public opinion. The context-dependent approach is open to discussion; however, it is not only in more gender-friendly Scandinavia (Freidenvall et al. 2006) that we find women leading male-dominated radical right-wing populist parties, but also in France, as Front National’s (FN) Marine Le Pen aptly exemplifies. Since Marine Le Pen took the lead of the FN after her father Jean-Marie, the party embarked on a project of political and image restyling, which increased electoral support and influenced parts of the French electorate’s opinion about the party.
Pia Kjærsgaard, Siv Jensen and Marine Le Pen are thus in many ways emblematic of successful radical right-wing populist female leaders who managed to achieve consensus and support among many white male voters in a predominantly white male party organisation. During their years in power, they also managed to broaden and consolidate electoral support. We believe that the following issues arise in relation to the role played by female radical right-wing populist leaders: does gender make a difference? How does gender intervene in media representations and self-representations of radical right-wing populist women political leaders?
This chapter addresses how gender is constructed in terms of style, rhetoric, discursive strategies and agenda positions in the case of the three established populist leaders: Pia Kjærsgaard, Marine Le Pen and Siv Jensen. In addition, we explore whether the Nordic countries constitute a sui generis framework supporting specific representations, gender constructions and self-representation of populist female leaders, which are influenced by context, opportunity, political culture and mainstream media constructions of repertoires of women politicians. The case studies thus focus particularly on similarities and differences in the representation and self-representations of these three right-wing populist women leaders.
Based on a theoretical framework outlined by the role of women in politics and gendered constructions of female politicians, this chapter looks at: (1) how female populist leaders represent themselves; and (2) how mainstream media coverage represents them in politics. This dual emphasis creates the backdrop for a fruitful comparative analysis of right-wing populist women leaders’ representations and self-representations in Western Europe and allows us to address issues that refer to gendered representations and stereotypes of feminine and masculine nature and relationships to hegemonic masculinities in politics (e.g. Messerschmidt 2010).
The chapter starts with an overview of the available literature on women in politics, highlighting gendered and stereotypical representations and practices in relation to women in politics vis-à-vis their male counterparts (e.g. Phillips 1995; Krook 2014). The methodological emphasis on different sources allows us to illustrate the issue of gender constructions and stereotypes, particularly in terms of the emphasis on characteristics and qualities that the media tend to employ in their coverage of populist right-wing women. We argue that media representations of women politicians is double-sided: the media disseminate symbolic representations based on stereotypes (e.g. Campus 2013); however, women politicians are not passive recipients of media representations, but active participants in the construction of their role, style and image (Campus 2013; Fiig 2010). In our view, this is particularly the case for radical right-wing populist leaders, also considering that members of the populist right-wing – both male and female – generally trust few sources of mainstream media, and their antipathy is often reciprocated by media elites (Elinas 2010).
Women in politics and women’s descriptive and symbolic representations are major issues in gender research (Dahlerup 2006; Krook 2014); however, surprisingly, there are only a few studies on women party leaders. In our analysis, we pay attention to main cluster themes emerging from a content analysis of the available resources (biographies, interviews, portrayals, etc.), drawing upon, for example, gendered stereotypes. We look at constructions of stereotypes of populist masculinity/femininity, relationships exposing tensions between (in this case) female populists’ public and private life and gendered media representations.
The research design focuses on case studies of how gender is at work for female leaders in three right-wing populist organisations. It presents a dual approach to female leadership, intersecting the representation of women in mainstream media coverage with their self-representations. The chapter is based on various primary and secondary empirical sources, including (auto)biographies, newspaper articles and interviews with party members. The empirical material consists of official and non-official life biographies, newspaper features, videos and interviews with party members (Siim et al. 2013). For the mainstream press, we had to limit our search, due to the vast data material. Therefore, we looked primarily at articles (portraits of populist female leaders) and at major newspaper articles published immediately following the three party leaders’ turnover. A qualitative in-depth textual analysis of the articles’ content allowed us to identify and structure the relevant frames and words used to describe and represent the three women leaders. For the Danish case, we searched the media database Infomedia from 7 August 2012 (DF’s official press announcement about Pia Kjærsgaard’s resignation) until the end of August. The search resulted in more than 250 articles covering the DF leadership shift in the Danish press. Most of the articles were published in the days after the party press release. A search on the Norwegian database Atekst using the string word ‘Siv Jensen’ for the timespan 1–31 May 2006 (www.retriever-info.com/no/category/media-analysis/) yielded 250 articles. Approximately ninety articles of most relevance for the comparison of leadership profiles were selected. For the French case, we looked at about sixty-five online articles concerning Marine Le Pen published in the period 1–31 January 2011 by Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération and Le Parisien.
Only a few scholarly studies today highlight the mass media’s influence on the framing of women politicians and leaders. This relationship entails both positive and negative effects, particularly in terms of the potential impact of these framings on women in politics as a whole and on their future opportunities – e.g. when they seize or hold leadership positions (Campus 2013). Popular TV series also offer interesting representations of men and women in politics. TV series have included popular plots on the public and private life of political leaders – for instance, the American series House of Cards and the Danish series Borgen (The Castle). Borgen is somehow emblematic here: it features a female politician, Birgitte Nyborg Christensen, leader of a Danish moderate party, who unexpectedly becomes prime minister. Birgitte performs the role of a modern, dynamic and morally and tactically aware female politician who faces a mostly male-based political environment of spin, tactical strategies and compromises, often challenging her moral standpoints. Birgitte is a politically talented female politician, often clothed in purple, who carefully listens to her rivals before addressing the public passionately, telling voters what they want to hear from her. At the same time, her (studied) assertiveness and self-confidence conceal profound insecurities in her position as PM. Interestingly, it is her (male) spin doctor Bent Sejrø who prompts her to ‘lead [the electorate], because they want to be led … and you will learn how to [do this] along the way’. In this sense, Borgen offers an odd ‘cliché’ perspective of a female prime minister in a Nordic country. The female politician reaches the top, and her struggle to find a balance between assertiveness and competence on the one hand and caring, honesty and moral integrity on the other hand ends in a divorce. This is a good example of the femininity–competence double bind discussed by Campus (2013: 55): ‘The substance of the double bind of femininity and competence is the quite impossible combination of looking tough enough to lead the nation in a war, but also caring enough to understand people’s worries and problems’. It is interesting how a Danish TV series from 2014 decided to portray the life, style and role of a female prime minister. Although the main character of the script is said to be inspired by former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt, Birgitte’s style and role show that there is no predefined ideal type or model for women in contemporary politics, compared to the more acknowledged and conventional male ideals: dressed in a grey suit, sharp, assertive and often brutal in style, manners and rhetoric when he handles adverse situations that can affect his power. This image of the male leader in politics is excellently portrayed by the protagonist Frank Underwood in the popular TV series House of Cards. As Campus (2013: 4) argues, this approach suggests that: ‘the association between successful leadership and masculine characteristics still prevails, and gender equality in this regard has yet to come in contemporary society’. Due to the oversimplification of the leadership ‘models’ in Borgen, Birgitte’s representation cannot be directly compared with the ‘real life’ of past and present women politicians and leaders. But this example allows us to reflect on the issues at stake, what is emphasised and identified as focus subjects when it comes to representing and ‘constructing’ female political leaders. Appearances and dress style seem to become relevant matters (sexy, feminine, masculine, neutral), just like the balance between public and private, where private family issues take centre stage in constructing and developing the environment surrounding women in politics in TV series.
Returning to the scholarly literature, it can be argued that, like other popular television genres, Borgen articulates, constructs and disseminates representations of women political leaders by reproducing and maintaining gendered stereotypes. Studies on the representation of the women in politics often have a propensity to construct and judge women in politics and in leadership positions vis-à-vis forms of hegemonic masculinities (Grint 2010). Leaning too much towards dominant masculine models is perceived as excessive for a woman (Jamieson 1995), but it is also ‘inappropriate’ for a woman to lean towards markers of femininity and sexuality when appearing and performing publicly (Campus 2013). These opposed poles are recreated by past and present stereotyped models, such as the iron lady, the ‘cold warrior’, the ‘I must prevail’ type typically referred to, and epitomised by, the late Tory leader and PM Margaret Thatcher. Yet, if masculine ‘copycat’ models are criticised, so are glamorous excesses of consumerist femininity, which also contain personalised stereotyping, such as Ségolène Royal and Edith Cresson in France and former Danish PM Helle Thorning Schmidt, nicknamed ‘Gucci-Helle’ by the media to criticise her glamorous, posh habits and upper-middle class academic background, which was considered incompatible with the average social democratic and working-class standpoints she was expected to represent.
Among the theoretical approaches to women political leaders and the media, we have selected two concepts that offer a useful theoretical framework for our analysis: Nancy Fraser’s concept of the public sphere (1990) and Judith Butler’s concept of performativity (2010).
In democratic theory the public sphere has a double function as an arena where citizens participate together and from where they attempt to influence politics. In her book Rethinking the Public Sphere, Fraser (1997) proposes a new post-bourgeois perspective. Fraser’s approach is based on a critical reconstruction of Habermas’ (1962/1991) model of the public sphere, which she claims is premised on the exclusion of women, along with other subaltern groups. Fraser’s rethinking of a democratic public sphere is based on conflicts and pluralism. Her criticism contains four main points: (1) Habermas’ liberal model idealises the bourgeois public sphere, which is still based on the exclusion of gender and marginalised social groups; (2) the Habermasian approach neglects the analysis of competing public spheres based on unequal relationships of power, where ‘weak publics’ oppose dominant ‘strong’ publics; (3) it also neglects the plurality of public spheres, in which counter-publics may contest exclusionary norms by elaborating alternative styles of political behaviour and alternative norms of public speech; and (4) it disregards the fact that the public sphere is constituted by conflict and based on the separation of public and private, civil society and the state. Fraser’s reconstruction (1997) thus presents an alternative normative model of democracy based on social equality: a multiplicity of publics based on the inclusion of interests and issues from the private sphere. Finally, it accommodates both strong and weak publics, and it encourages studies of their interrelations. This approach allows us to address key characteristics of the public sphere and the media landscape.
The media is perceived to be an important part of the public sphere and has a key role as a forum for society’s collective dialogue with and about itself (Keane 1991). From this perspective, the media site is not a neutral sphere, but a platform for ex/inclusion and empowerment/disempowerment of women and other marginalised groups in society (Fiig 2010). From a gender perspective, the media is a specific site for women politicians. On the one hand, the media tend to reproduce symbolic representation based on inequality, exclusion and often gendered and racialised stereotypes; on the other hand, media exposure gives women in politics an opportunity to develop agency and forms of empowerment.
We propose that one way to evolve the dynamic approach to the media representation of female politicians as both agents/subjects and targets/objects of the media is to combine Fraser’s understanding of the public sphere with Butler’s concept of performativity (2010). This would shed light on how, and to what extent, female leaders of radical right-wing populist parties are both targets of gendered approaches and subjects that directly engage with, and influence, the framing of media presentation. Thus, self-representations, self-portrayals and self-images can affect mainstream media representations and public perceptions, rather than only the other way around. Our empirical study of Pia Kjærsgaard, Siv Jensen and Marine Le Pen wants to explore this mutual inter-reaction.
Masculinity research has addressed the public power structure from different theoretical angles by focusing specifically on the concept of hegemonic masculinity (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Norocel 2013). This concept is still a matter of debate in the field, but it has proven useful for studying multiple masculinities in relation to power relationships in different domains, such as political leadership and media representation. Messerschmidt (2010: 6) defines the concept as ‘the pattern of practice that allows men’s dominance over women to continue’ and emphasises its relational character. This implies that the concept has no meaning outside its relationship to emphasised femininity and to non-hegemonic masculinities – that is, to those forms of femininity that are practiced in a complimentary, compliant, accommodating and subordinate relationship to hegemonic masculinity. According to Messerschmidt (2010: 9), researchers have started to expand the concept in four main ways: by documenting the consequences and costs of hegemony, by uncovering mechanisms of hegemony, by showing greater diversity in masculinities and by tracing changes and transformations of paradigms and masculine/feminine stereotypes. Considering this approach allows us to address diversities and the hybridity of masculinities and femininities in relation to populist female leaders and their compliance with, or challenge to, dominant models of masculinity, in a context where the male presence dominates among party members, as well as party voters.
As already mentioned, comparative studies of women in politics with leadership positions are scattered (Apfelbaum 1993; Thomas 1994; Blee and McGee Deutsch 2012; Krogstad and Storvik 2012) and have different aims and scopes. This research field relies on a scholarly approach that often embarks on broad-scope analyses of ‘gendered’ media representations of women in politics (Braden 1996; Norris 1997; Eide 2010), often from country- or case-based perspectives, to disclose the relationship between the mainstream media and gendered representations of female politicians and candidates (Campus 2013; Murray 2004; Ross and Sreberny 2000; Braden 1996).
Concerning women political leaders, international studies find that despite developments and transformations in society, politics and the media over the past few decades, women who aspire to leadership positions, particularly in politics, face the dilemma concerning gender norms (Rudman and Phelan 2008) and the so-called femininity–competence double bind (Jamieson 1995), which, often in contradictory ways, distinguishes between the attributes (both qualitative and quantitative) voters expect in a male or female candidate. According to widespread gender beliefs, ‘think power, think male’ still applies in politics and society, making leadership closely associated and almost synonymous with hegemonic masculinity. Men are seen as more assertive, controlling and self-confident (Eagly and Karau 2002) – qualities which are often closely associated with leadership and power. It follows that since the male sex is perceived and represented as better suited for leadership than the female sex (Kellerman 2007), one strategy for women is to try to emphasise qualities and attributes that deviate from the female stereotype. But this, as observed by Bourdieu (2002), makes women in leadership positions appear to reverse the natural order of the relationship between sex and power and thus to be portrayed as ‘atypical’, ‘outsider’ and ‘exceptional’. However, it is perhaps on the basis of this perceived ‘exceptionality’ that female charismatic leadership can be constructed and framed. Krook (2014) suggests that the ‘lack of fit’ between feminine stereotypes and leadership qualities also limits women’s self-representation: they can either frame their participation as an extension of their roles as mothers (Chaney 1979), decide not to have children or wait until their children have grown up before pursuing a political career. In the first instance, women’s entry does not challenge traditional gender roles, while in the second women are better equipped to conform to the male norm, which does not need to take family responsibilities and ‘motherhood’ stereotypes into account. However, not being a wife and mother can be perceived and constructed as ‘deviant’, and such women may have to explain their choice and endure speculations about a calculated career strategy.
The issue of media coverage of women political leaders has scarcely been investigated, and today the results seem to be outdated, especially considering the growing number of women political leaders on the international stage and the many transformations that have characterised political communication, also triggered by digital media. Again, Campus (2013) offers a rather comprehensive account of how media coverage today operates in a context where politics has become a highly mediatised arena and at the same time highly personalised. The focus on the individual party leader candidate becomes increasingly evident during electoral campaigns. This process of popularisation and celebrity-making has put political leaders front stage and made them more ‘familiar’ and ‘intimate’ by disclosing aspects of their private life unimaginable only a few decades ago. What is interesting in these media framings is how they affect female political leaders – e.g. by reinforcing gendered stereotypes, but also by opening up new opportunities for self-representation that can advantageously be used by other women aiming at leadership positions.
Other research opts for context, rather than widely perceived gender-related factors; in this case, the socio-political and cultural backgrounds are considered to directly, or indirectly, influence the reception of women in politics and to affect media representation as well as their self-representations (e.g. Krogstad and Storvik 2012). By considering more context-dependent opportunities, these studies highlight the direct causality between the descriptive representation (number of women in politics – e.g. elected female MPs) and the substantive representation (women-friendly policies) to explain comparatively higher levels of acceptability of women in government positions. Similarly, some studies propose essentialised and static national typologies or stereotyped models of women in politics that are determined by historical patterns defined by national political culture. This path-dependency approach frequently results in support or opposition to past and present hegemonic models of masculinities in politics (e.g. Krogstad and Storvik 2012; Moustgaard 2004; Fiig 2010).
However, research has also shown that there is no magic in numbers and that a high representation of women in parliament is no guarantee that these women act as/for women; representatives who claim to act in the ‘name of women’ may, in fact, be anti-feminists (Childs and Webb 2012). The question is also whether the Nordic countries represent a special ‘model’ in terms of women leaders in politics, by virtue of a comparatively higher representation of women in parliament, generally believed to encourage and support gender-friendly policies (Freidenvall et al. 2006). However, this does not necessarily bring less biased media representations of female political leaders (Andreassen 2005; Eide 2010); gendered stereotyped constructs, representations and self-representation still exist, although constructions of gender have evolved and often focus on intersections with other social categories, such as class, race, ethnicity and religion (Fiig 2010).
To sum up: women politicians who reach political leadership positions are still framed differently than their male counterparts, and the media often disseminate and strengthen gendered stereotypes. However, media representations are not exclusively antagonistic, stereotypical and discriminatory; women politicians in, or aiming for, leadership positions are no longer only ‘targets’ of negative media coverage, but they can also play an active role in influencing media representations. The media has become too important for politics to be left alone, and many female politicians understand the need to contribute to these representations, by personal engagement and direct influence. One implication is that representations and images of female politicians (the way they dress, the way they look, etc.) take place within a dynamic relationship influenced both by how female politicians represent themselves and by the way they are portrayed by the media. We expect that this ‘logic’ also applies to populist radical right-wing women leaders. It is thus interesting to consider to what extent the leadership style of female populist radical right leaders is gendered, both from the perspective of the female leaders themselves and from that of the mainstream media. For this purpose, the next section looks at representations and self-representations of female right-wing populist leaders Pia Kjærsgaard, Siv Jensen and Marine Le Pen, focusing on similarities and differences between the three cases.
In view of the voters’ support and electoral stability garnered by the DF since the late 1990s, the party’s long-time (1995–2012) leader Pia Kjærsgaard is emblematic of the successful female right-wing populist leader. In her nearly two decades as leader, Pia Kjærsgaard attracted loyal followers and achieved political success, leadership longevity and party consolidation. Kjærsgaard is also the first woman in Denmark who founded a new party and managed to move it from the political margins to the mainstream of Danish politics (Meret 2010). In addition, she was, for a long time, the only woman in Western Europe leading a right-wing populist party. It is therefore peculiar that her name never appears on the list of radical right-wing leaders with charisma and popularity in scholarly studies in the field.
This section addresses questions about gendered representation and the populist right by looking at the way Pia Kjærsgaard’s role, style and image have been communicated and mediatised by the official party literature (biographies, authorised books, articles) and in the Danish mainstream media.
Until recently, the DF average voter was a (white) man, manual worker with comparatively low educational attainment (see Meret 2010). Since its inception, the DF has attracted increasing numbers of working-class men, thus becoming the most clear-cut working-class party in Danish politics. The beginnings were difficult, but the electoral breakthrough came relatively early.
Between 2001 and 2011, the DF played a key role as support party for the Liberal–Conservative coalition government and wielded its influence on the political and public media discourse in ‘Othering’ ethnic minorities, targeting especially the Muslim minority (Betz and Meret 2009; Hervik 2012). At the November 2011 election, the DF lost relatively little in terms of support (–1.6 pct.) compared to the Conservatives and the Liberals. On 7 August 2012, Pia Kjærsgaard resigned from her leadership post and designated Kristen Thulesen Dahl as her successor. The shift did not affect the party’s popularity: at the municipal elections on 19 November 2013, the DF had its breakthrough at the local level, and at the May 2014 European elections, the party gained 26.6 per cent of the votes, which ensured three mandates in the EP and the majority of the Danish votes. At the 2015 national election, the party received 21.1 per cent of the votes and became the second biggest party after the Social Democrats, but preferred to remain out of the Liberal minority government.1
Since the beginning, Pia Kjærsgaard has communicated polarising and divisive opinions that split the public between those (the majority) who are not susceptible to her appeal and those (the minority) who consider her a charismatic and competent party leader. In her many years as DF leader, Kjærsgaard remained a controversial politician, but DF supporters still saw her as a charismatic leader, who spoke the language of the ordinary people, different from mainstream political leaders. As observed by a Danish journalist (Mylenberg 2009: 17): ‘For many she is the symbol of all the worst. For others, of all the best. […] But nobody remains indifferent [about her] and she has learned to live with it’.
Stubbornness, an aggressive style and tone and despotic leadership have frequently been used to describe Pia Kjærsgaard’s style. While these features do not seem to differ from the authoritarian style so often attributed to right-wing radical charismatic populist male leaders, in Kjærsgaard’s case this framing has attracted comparatively more attention and comments from both the media and Kjærsgaard herself. This reaction supports what Campus (2013: 54) calls the femininity–competence double bind, referring to women leaders’ difficult balance between the strength, determination and assertiveness generally correlated to, and expected from, political (male) leadership and the ideal of a female leadership style associated with the role of the nation’s caretaker: the nurturing and motherly figure. It is interesting to look at how these frames and representations have been performed by Pia Kjærsgaard and reproduced by the mainstream media and to what extent the two converge or diverge.
As regards self-representations, Pia Kjærsgaard has never attempted to hide her need to keep things under strict control, often by use of authoritarian methods. On the contrary, her explanations revolve around two main narratives: (1) avoid the anarchy and lack of control in the Danish Progress Party; and (2) her personal narrative. The need to build consensus and conformity in the party is often brought up to justify her strong temperament and authoritarian style and is contrasted with the anarchy that characterised the Progress Party and eventually caused its collapse in the mid-1990s. In a newsletter entitled ‘Control From the Top? Yes, Of Course’ (Kjærsgaard 2000), Pia Kjærsgaard explained that a highly centralised party leadership is a necessity to prevent the chaos that ensued in the Progress Party (see also Meret 2015).
A very personal account brings up Kjærsgaard’s private life and how her parents’ divorce when she was a teenager influenced her personality. The unfolding of these events and the psychological and personal consequences for her and her younger brother’s upbringing are reported in great detail in Kjærsgaard’s biographies (cf. Kjærsgaard 1998, 2013). The autobiographical narrative also explains – almost in an apologetic way – Kjærsgaard’s self-confessed nature as ‘a control freak’, as ‘system obsessed’ behind the façade (Kjærsgaard with Meier Carlsen 2013: 57, 58), both in private and public life. Kjærsgaard’s ‘iron lady’ style is not restricted to the public sphere, but almost generates from her personal life. Nevertheless, her own account is more reminiscent of the proper and scrupulous housewife, keeping home and family economically tidy, rather than of the authoritarian type. ‘I must have order in my office, home, in my personal economy, order in the parliamentary group’ (Kjærsgaard with Meier Carlsen 2013: 292), confessed an almost apologetic Pia Kjærsgaard.
Kjærsgaard’s self-portrayal of ‘total control’ emerges particularly in her leadership style, which is aimed at centralising, disciplining and consolidating power around her person, thereby showing the qualities of an inflexible, determined and undemocratic leader. Her retreat from leadership was planned in detail well ahead of time to secure her an exit at the top of her career. For Kjærsgaard, politics is primarily an arena of conflict, opposition, struggle and power: ‘In the struggle for power one must take advantage of the others’ weaknesses’ and ‘in some situations one must be brutal and I have no problems being that’ (Kjærsgaard with Meier Carlsen 2013: 85, 121). ‘Top-down control’ and party discipline were essential to keep the party rows together and lined up.
The mainstream press added to the image of an all-controlling woman, who dictates, organises and directs everything and everybody in the party. The DF is often described as Kjærsgaard’s ‘own private creation’ and a place ‘where everything is calculated, nothing left to coincidence’ (Kragh 2003: 89), thus endorsing Kjærsgaard’s ‘obsessive need to know everything that’s going on’ inside and outside the party.
In contrast to the intransigent style and rhetoric of Pia Kjærsgaard’s leadership, we find accounts that underscore her emotional nature and overly empathetic character, suggesting a somehow stereotyped idea of a woman who is hardly in control of her feelings. Several articles portray Kjærsgaard as a woman with strong feelings: a politician inclined to ‘drive politics more through gut than mind’, as an editor of the daily Jyllands-Posten put it (Jyllands-Posten 2012). She openly admits that she is ‘a very emotional being’ (Kjærsgaard, in Mylenberg 2009: 19), thus adding an aspect of spontaneity, frankness and straightforwardness.
This image is reproduced and emphasised several times by the press; Pia Kjærsgaard’s rigid and domineering party leader image, counterbalanced by a private Pia: the simple, unpretentious family woman, the ordinary mother and housewife. Or, alternatively, the ‘huffy domestic worker’, as the broadsheet Politiken nicknamed her in the 1990s. The DF leader is thus described as ‘an emotional person’ who shows how she feels, whether ‘she is angry, disappointed, mad or touched’. She is seen as the politician ‘who stands up for issues that expose her emotions to the Danes’. This is also considered part of her personal communicative style and rhetoric, which articulates what DF voters think and feel, in a way that is not necessarily underpinned by facts, analysis or research. It is the image of an ordinary person speaking out for the majority or, as Pia Kjærsgaard observed:
I am sometimes completely surprised by the reaction to my words. I only say aloud what I mean. I give voice and act as spokesperson for all those people who perhaps do not dare speak up and expose themselves in the public debate.
(Kjærsgaard, in Aagaard and Sommer 2003: 271)
The border between private and public life is very thin in the case of Kjærsgaard. As party leader, she was willing to be portrayed in informal situations at home with her husband and dog or doing her Sunday or Christmas bake-off. In fact, Kjærsgaard seems to have taken advantage of the increasing ‘privatisation’ of politics, understanding the need to cultivate a more intimate and informal self-representation to balance her political hard-style and authoritarianism. A housewife ‘wearing an apron’, showing a preference for ordinary/everyday lifestyle and consumption, portrayed in a familiar background of plain Danish items and identifiable motifs communicates an unadventurous image of normality, conformity and, above all, ‘safety’. In this sense, it can be argued that Kjærsgaard strived to and, in many ways, succeeded in combining different roles and images. For Pia Kjærsgaard as wife, mother, friend, politician and private person, the political and the private are closely related, and all spheres become part of the politician’s public profile and being. In this sense, she is reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher, who willingly assumed the public role of the devoted wife and mother, who also ‘exalted domestic expertise as a potential political skill, by declaring that running a home was good practice for running a campaign’ (Campus 2013: 95). Predictably, Pia Kjærsgaard used Thatcher as a role model: ‘Margaret Thatcher was a role model to me. I consider it a lack in my political formation that I never met her personally. […] She was tough and I am flattered that I was called Iron Lady like her’ (Kjærsgaard with Meier Carlsen 2013: 93). In the accounts analysed so far, the aspects related to Kjærsgaard’s populist style and behaviour often seem to be drawn from gender-constructed attributes and features. To put it simply, she appears to be more of a populist than a charismatic leader. And she willingly plays with this representation of her.
The most evident gendered construct is Pia Kjærsgaard as the ‘mother of the party’. The motherly representation and construction of the female body and behaviour is not unusual for women. Women leaders are often associated with the model of the mother of the nation, thus taking advantage of a culturally approved model of female leadership, because it is rooted in the traditional values of nurturing and caring. On several occasions, DF members called Pia Kjærsgaard ‘the mother of us all’; a role she willingly played with and buttressed – for example, by addressing some of her collaborators as ‘my boys’ and acknowledging her motherly role in the party (Kjærsgaard with Meier Carlsen 2013: 122).
Pia Kjærsgaard offers an unusual profile of a woman political leader that challenges accepted Scandinavian models of womanhood and motherhood associated with gender equality and ‘overall’ liberal feminist approaches and practices. Kjærsgaard is portrayed as the caring mother who stayed at home to take care of her children until they grew up, before deciding to join politics and to ‘give birth’ to a new party, which she cared for until this was consolidated enough in Danish politics to be left to the younger generation of men. Her roles as social worker, caring mother and housewife are deliberately contrasted with the professionalised, educated, political elite and particularly with younger female politicians with academic backgrounds.
Newspaper articles commenting on the DF leadership shift in August 2012 also created interesting and contrasting gendered portrayals of the resigning Pia Kjærsgaard and Kristian Thulesen Dahl, her successor. As far as style, character, behaviour and functions, Pia Kjærsgaard is often described as ‘talented’, ‘clever’, ‘efficient’, ‘competent’ and ‘one of the most powerful women’ in Danish politics. Her leadership style is as often called ‘brutal’ and ‘determined’ and her ‘unique success and personal achievements’ are seen as the result of her own talents (Larsen 2012; Rehling 2012). But Kjærsgaard’s style is also associated with a temperament which allows her ‘to speak from the heart’ and ‘talk directly to people’s feelings’ (e.g. Kestler 2012).
In comparison, Kristian Thulesen Dahl is portrayed as the party’s ‘number cruncher’, due to his academic background in economics, but mainly by virtue of his role as the DF’s budget negotiator in the years 2001–2011. His style and personality are described as ‘analytical’, ‘structured’, ‘professional’, a ‘talented negotiator’, ‘tactician’ and a ‘good communicator’ (e.g. Engell 2012b). His personal political skills and expertise somehow outmatch Kjærsgaard’s; one article, in particular, argues that ‘in his position as main negotiator, Kristian Thulesen Dahl has for a long time been “de facto” daily leader of the party, whereas Pia Kjærsgaard’s position has been of a more general character’ (Mortensen 2012). Thulesen Dahl is described as ‘less temperamental’ than Pia Kjærsgaard, although his ‘uncle tie dry style’ (Engell 2012a) is considered to challenge Pia Kjærsgaard’s informal and plain leadership dress code and approach. However, several sources also emphasise that Thulesen Dahl embodies the phase of normalisation, mainstreaming and political routinisation of the DF in Danish politics (Østergaard 2012). In a new era of political influence, a leader with a background, formation and style ‘like other party leaders in Parliament’ can perhaps make the DF also look like an ‘ordinary party’. It remains to be seen what the banalisation of radical right-wing populism in Denmark will allow the DF to accomplish in terms of political influence and electoral achievements.
From 1978 until 2006, Carl Ivar Hagen was the undisputed leader of the Progress Party; according to some, the uncontested king. When Hagen stepped down, he declared ‘great trust’ in the competency of Siv Jensen, which he admitted that he had personally tested throughout the years ‘to ponder whether she could successfully handle a political debate alone’ (Hagen 2007: 303). This gave Hagen the opportunity to identify Jensen’s political qualities, which, according to his autobiography, are ‘determination and little respect for the other parties’ authority, her talent to quickly learn the political rules of the game’, but also ‘her good looks’, ‘youth’ and ‘modesty’ (Hagen 2007: 303, 316). Siv Jensen also became a popular politician: in 2001, she was listed as one of Norway’s most powerful people by the newspaper Dagbladet, and around the same time the tabloid VG mentioned her as the politician on her way to power (Aurdal 2006: 37). The media focus on her person gradually increased. Among all Jensen’s positive qualities, former FrP leader Hagen found only one obvious grey spot: ‘She was unmarried and did not have a boyfriend’ (Hagen 2007: 408). In Norway, these soon became newsworthy issues. Unsurprisingly, being single and not officially engaged can expose female politicians to ‘rumours about being lesbian, or even worse, being labelled as spinsters who have sacrificed their sexuality for their career’, while a childless leader can be viewed as unqualified to represent women (Campus 2013: 97). ‘Going personal’ has thus been different for Siv Jensen than for Pia Kjærsgaard, whose life and self-representations strived to consolidate a conformist and reassuring family–mother type. And from a male perspective, Carl I. Hagen did the same. Siv Jensen’s private sphere also deviated from what had characterised the FrP in terms of family preferences. How did she tackle this as party leader? The question is taken up and discussed at length in Jensen’s 2006 official biography in a chapter significantly titled ‘Siv, only Siv’ (see Aurdal 2006: 27–39). Here, Jensen condemns the media’s focus on her private life as a stereotypical approach that affects women political leaders more than men (Aurdal 2006: 29). Being blunt about the consequences for her private sphere seems like a way to trigger understanding and solidarity from public opinion and to justify Jensen’s choice to disconnect the public and the private sphere. Unlike Pia Kjærsgaard, Siv Jensen cannot relate public and private to strengthen her image and position; she has thus been required to find a way to legitimise her ‘keeping private’. In reality, she represents many Norwegian single women with a substantial education, but she apparently prefers to emphasise that her situation is not her own choice and that ‘for a woman with power it is not easy to find someone’ (Aurdal 2006: 32).
In general, the Norwegian mainstream media’s reception of Siv Jensen has been relatively positive. An example is the comparison to well-known and esteemed Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, who served in the 1980s and 1990s. Today, Brundtland is one of the most famous political figures in Norwegian political history. At least two extensive portraits of Siv Jensen in the dailies Dagbladet and Dagsavisen (Simonsen 2006; Nielsen 2006) illustrate this interesting comparison. Dagbladet describes Siv Jensen as ‘the new queen in Norwegian politics’ (Simonsen 2006), arguing that she was elected in a male-dominated party and is about to take over the heritage after Brundtland. This comparison seems hazardous, since Brundtland is well-known internationally as a strong Norwegian Social Democrat and feminist, who later became an ardent advocate for the environment as the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1998. Norwegians remember that Brundtland headed the first female-led Norwegian ministry with 40 per cent women in the government in 1986. It became the model for the Norwegian scholar Helga Maria Hernes’ influential concept about ‘a women-friendly welfare state’ and the start of the Norwegian era of ‘state-feminism’, which ‘would not force harder choices on women than on men, or permit unjust treatment on the basis of sex’ (1987: 15).
The article in Dagsavisen goes as far as labelling Siv Jensen Gro’s illegitimate daughter (Ulstein 2006), thus referring to both similarities and differences. In terms of similarities, both women have a direct style of political communication and there are similarities in their hoarse voice, language and tough dominant style (herskerteknik) towards political opponents. Both are self-confident and may appear arrogant, since they are not afraid to use their own authority against journalists and political opponents. Neither cares much about personal appearance, both take gender equality for granted and have an authoritarian style (Åshild 2006). As formulated in an article (Ulstein 2006):
[Siv Jensen] walks like Gro, talks like Gro, dresses like Gro, maybe even thinks like Gro – but she is not Gro. She is the Workers’ Party [Arbejderpartiet] worse enemy. […] Gro has four children; Siv is single and childless … Siv is Gro’s fifth child and [it adds with a reference to Doris Lessing’s book] a thorn in her side …
Political commentators and experts also refer to important differences – for example, class background: Brundtland came from the well-educated elite; Siv Jensen from the lower-middle class (cf. Aurdal 2006). Also, their politics differ: Brundtland is a socialist; Jensen defines herself as a liberal-conservative. For sure, the major difference is how they relate to gender politics: Siv Jensen (and the FrP) is a strong opponent of the Norwegian gender quota system in politics and economic boards, arguing that equality in this case should be based on skills and not gender (cf. Meret and Siim 2013). In fact, the comparison reveals the mainstream media’s positive approach to the new FrP leader, rather than a consistency in the comparison.
Siv Jensen’s response to the comparison to Gro Harlem Brundtland was ambiguous: she claims to have respect for Brundtland’s person and her political achievements, but she disagrees strongly with her gender politics, reiterating her standpoint that women do not need gender politics, but must make their own. Asked about Brundtland’s female-headed government in 1986, Siv Jensen replies (Jensen’s quoted in Dagbladet 2006):
Gro Harlem Brundtland did something historical with a women government, which she should get credit for. She proved that it was possible to find competent women for top positions in Norwegian society. You may say that Brundtland’s government launched a new epoch [epokeskifte]. At the same time, the development of society means that competent women have been able to reach top positions, when and if they wanted this. Women should be credited for that.
Jensen asserts that she likes to break barriers. Although she disagrees with Brundtland’s politics, she agrees that gender equality has indeed gone far (perhaps too far) in politics, but she complains that women and men are treated differently by the media and refers to her own situation. It annoys and disturbs her to have to answer questions about her private life and why she did not marry and have children.
Media framings point towards tensions between Siv Jensen’s positions on gender equality and opposition to feminism. As noted in an article (Mathisen 2006): ‘On the one hand [Siv Jensen] is a declared antifeminist in the sense that she is against Norwegian equality legislation, which includes gender quota, equality “ombudsman” (government investigator) and official celebration of the women’s day, March 8’. On the other, Jensen challenges the dominant Norwegian self-understanding about gender equality, and this is considered unpopular among the Norwegian political elites, journalists and feminists. The article asks whether Jensen’s popularity should be interpreted as a sign that Norwegian women are tired of mainstream state-feminism – or perhaps what is defined as a feminist saturation point. The article claims that Siv Jensen, because of her family’s social background, shows that it is possible to succeed and reach powerful positions without gender politics. In this way, Siv Jensen is an interesting case, being a woman leader of a male-dominated party, who became successful despite her lower–middle class background, but who maintains opposition to legislation that could help other women reach leadership positions in politics and business. Siv Jensen represents herself and is represented as the successful self-made woman political leader.
According to Norwegian mainstream press debates, Jensen’s anti-feminism is of a special kind. At the 2009 FrP general meeting, Siv Jensen acclaimed what she considers her ‘every day feminists’, such as her great-grandmother Betsy Kjeldsberg (Vinding and Breien Ellingsen 2009), criticising ‘the attempt of the left-wing to monopolize the concept of feminism’ (Nationen 2009). In a 2012 article with party fellow Solveig Horne, Jensen bluntly declared: ‘We are feminists’ (Jensen and Horne 2012). Her message to women is: ‘If you want something, you can get it! (Hvis du vil, så kan du)’, which people like and which won over female voters after she became FrP leader (Håvard 2006). Some commentators find that her criticism of the dominant (Norwegian) version of state feminism offers an alternative to established feminist ideas; not accepting traditional conventions about family life (being unmarried and childless) and expecting to be accepted as such. As argued in her biography (Aurdal 2006), this should prompt other women in a similar position to join the party (Åshild 2006).
Several articles emphasise the contradictions between Siv Jensen’s public position on feminism and gender equality and her self-representation as a woman who fought her way to the top. An article suggests that perhaps Norwegian feminists need to acknowledge that Siv Jensen has become a powerful political leader and a new model in Norwegian politics for many conservative right-wing women who lacked a role model (Håvard 2006). Rather than a feminist, Siv Jensen is presented as a modern populist female leader who can attract other women like her to the party, in a context where a motherly/housewife type might look old-fashioned.
In her comments to Næringsliv Morgen, political scientist Hege Skjeie goes as far as to call Siv Jensen a ‘postfeminist’, a ‘foreman’ of a politically incorrect and partly still contentious party (Skjeie 2006). Skjeie finds that Siv Jensen is the first post-feminist in Norwegian politics without a feminist programme. The official party position is that Norwegian women do not need gender equality laws, but immigrant women do, especially if they are from Muslim countries with a patriarchal culture. Siv Jensen is for gender equality legislation only when this is used in relation to integration politics and ethnic minorities. As observed elsewhere (see Meret and Siim 2013), these double standards on gender equality and policies distinguish the position of the right-wing populist parties and their opportunistic and instrumentalised use of gender equality issues in populist politics.
Some political commentators on female leadership stress that her image as a woman economist may threaten the public (Nationen 2006). Others find that she makes the Progress Party more ‘sexy’ and more willing to compromise than her predecessor Carl I. Hagen (Lode and Gjerstad 2006). Asked by the Norwegian daily Aftenposten whether she finds it unfair that the more power women get, the more frightening men perceive them to be, she replied: ‘[I don’t think it is] unfair but there is still work to be done in this field’. She believes, however, that Norway is gradually becoming a society where women in high positions will not be perceived as threatening, as more and more will reach the top. Asked whether she is tougher than most women, she replied:
No, but it is a problem that women feel that they have to master 120 pct. before they try something. But everybody who has struggled in life knows that most times you land on your feet. More women ought to try that.
(Storvik 2006)
Media presentations tend to emphasise that Siv Jensen is an ambitious woman who knows what she wants. When she entered parliament in 1996, at the age of 28, she was asked what post she would like to take; Jensen replied: ‘the Committee of Finance’ (Harald 2006). She got the position and in 2014 she was appointed Minister of Finance. Several political commentators describe Siv Jensen as ‘bossy’ and competent in political debates. Some speculate that she hides her femininity by acting ‘like a man’, and this is seen as a positive thing and as necessary to tackle public debates (Nationen 2006).
Of course, the press also focuses on similarities/differences between Siv Jensen and former FrP leader Carl I. Hagen. Jensen is considered to have a different rhetoric than Hagen, but commentators agree that their politics are the same. Interestingly, the FrP is often termed as a ‘new’ conservative party with a liberal agenda, and Siv Jensen is framed as more of a liberal type compared to Hagen, with reference to her motto: ‘Less state and more private initiative’. It is also emphasised that the FrP leadership change may lead to a shift in the Norwegian political climate, with an impact on the relationship between non-socialist parties – in particular, between the Conservatives (Høyre) led by Erna Solberg and the FrP (Strand 2006). Erna Solberg commented that it was easier to gather the four non-socialist parties in government under Siv Jensen than it had been under Carl I. Hagen (Johnsen et al. 2006). Siv Jensen made it clear that her main project would be to prepare FrP’s entry into government (Simonsen 2006).
However, Jensen’s attempt to change the title of the FrP leader from ‘foremann’ to ‘forekvinne’ (literally: front woman) was bluntly rejected by the party members (Gjerstad 2006). This sent a message that there are limits to gender equality and that a female leader is an exception rather than the rule. Jensen did not insist and said that the most important thing is that the party agrees to have her as leader, no matter the title (Gjerstad 2006). However, the incident showed that Jensen’s gender issues start right within her own party.
Jensen was appointed FrP leader after years as party vice-chair, and the media described her as a colourless but competent administrator compared to Carl I. Hagen’s populist charisma. Jensen, too, has been rather acquiescent with Hagen, considering him as a ‘father’ figure and showing him loyalty and compliance. Jensen constructs her image as an (emotional) idealist, a dedicated politician, a workaholic who can get by on five hours’ sleep and is not afraid to face opposition and challenges.
Siv Jensen’s self-presentation refers to diverse qualities as a private and public person, although in quite a different way than, for example, Pia Kjærsgaard. In private she likes to frame herself as ‘one of the people’, the daughter of a single mother of four, who had to fight her way up. Her mother and sisters are her closest family, with whom she still has close ties (see Aurdal 2006). Her public image is a tough, determined and active woman with an academic background in economics (Thorenfeldt and Solstad 2006), who is not afraid to speak out.
It can be argued that Siv Jensen’s political agenda is fairly similar to Carl I. Hagen’s radical right-wing populist line, but being a woman she is often exposed to gendered stereotyping. Her relationship to the heritage of Norwegian gender equality politics – and feminism – is often ambiguously defined and commented upon. She acknowledges the results achieved in this area in Norway, but claims that women can now make it on their own just as she did.
The Front National congress, held at the Centre Vinci in the city of Tours on 15–16 January 2011, was of historic significance for the party: Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the FN since its foundation in 1972, stepped down and his youngest daughter, forty-two-year-old Marine Le Pen, replaced him as party leader. Marine Le Pen defeated another historical top member of the party, Bruno Gollnisch, with more than 67 per cent of the congress votes. Jean-Marie Le Pen’s withdrawal, after forty years in the FN, paved the way for several strategic options for the party’s future. For most observers of the FN post-Jean Marie Le Pen, the central question became: which way will Marine Le Pen choose? Would she reproduce the kind of leadership her father built during the years in power, based on public provocation, denouncement of the establishment and the elites, extremism and loud expression of ‘what everybody thinks but cannot say’? Or would she introduce a new impulse and a new party orientation that could win over a larger part of the French electorate? Since the beginning of Marine Le Pen’s leadership, two polarised positions have manifested themselves: ‘she changed everything’ and ‘she didn’t change anything’.
This tension makes the case of Marine Le Pen special in terms of assessing the modernisation of European right-wing populism. The gender issue was, from the start, embedded in Jean-Marie Le Pen’s legacy. Marine Le Pen was not only the first woman leader in the French main radical right-wing organisation, she was also the daughter of the man who made its history; and commentators, as well as Marine Le Pen, use this as one way to distinguish herself from her father. This may also explain why – and this is worth noticing in this context – there is a general lack of articles in our survey that directly refer to gender and look at Marine Le Pen’s role, style, image and behaviour in this light.
Of course, the gendered perception exists and is expressed in the ways political leaders are talked about and analysed. For example, the mainstream press emphasises Marine Le Pen’s blond hair and new haircut, her weight loss and her change of lifestyle (she was known as the ‘party girl’): physical characteristics barely observed about men in politics (see Campus 2013). However, the gender issue is most obvious in the clear dichotomy between the masculinity associated with Jean-Marie Le Pen’s heritage and the feminine attributes linked to Marine Le Pen’s strategy of moderation, which started from within the party.
First – and obviously, given the very close family ties – articles frequently look for similarities between Jean-Marie and Marine, as expressed in titles such as: ‘Jean-Marine’ (Solé 2011) or ‘Marine Le Pen, following in her dad’s footsteps’ (Østergaard 2011a). The aim of these articles is clear: to show that Marine Le Pen is not so different from her father, leading a party whose success is linked to issues such as immigration and the EU. This similarity will maintain the same kind of proposals and produce the same kind of cleavages – for example, between ‘French’ and ‘migrants’. The only difference could be the style and the words used to spread the message, but researchers have demonstrated very little difference between Jean-Marie’s and Marine Le Pen’s rhetoric (Alduy and Wahnich 2015). It is also worth noticing that, from this perspective, many articles portray Marine Le Pen through specific characteristics that evoke ‘virility’. Male aesthetics play a general role in populism and have often been emphasised in the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen in particular. Scholars traditionally considered the FN a party for men, led by a man who mainly appealed to a male electorate with his ‘fighting virility, outrageous and scandalous conduct’ (Lagrange and Perrineau 1997; see also Mayer 2002: 134). Marine Le Pen is therefore portrayed as a woman who has to adapt to a masculine position of power. She is described with many attributes that gender stereotypes tend to associate with men (Achin and Levêque 2006): strong, tough, determined, a natural leader; for example: ‘Marine Le Pen, chief’s daughter and tough woman’ (Dubouloz 2011); or even more relevant from a gendered perspective: ‘the FN will always be lepéniste, a blond and female version’ (Nivelle 2011).
Some articles even use psychological explanations, analyses and notions to explain the transmission of this virility, despite the father–daughter legacy. In a portrait by the left-wing liberal newspaper Libération (Nivelle 2011), Marine Le Pen is described by some of her close relatives and colleagues as being ‘the absolute clone of her father’, ‘a would-be boy, always leader of the pack, but also influenced by a strong and often absent father and whose three daughters competed for his attention’.
Marine Le Pen’s background and leadership style are also described as strongly influenced by, but substantially different from, her father’s. She is presented as the architect of a new course in the FN to bring the party from the margins to the mainstream of French politics. At the FN congress in Tours, Marine Le Pen openly formulated her mission for an ‘alternative society’ based on French ‘national sovereignty’ and opposing the challenges represented by Islam and mondialisation promoted in France by ‘totalitarian Islam-leftist positions’.
Several articles commenting on the leadership shift corroborate this image of Marine Le Pen as the architect and performer of the so-called de-démonisation: a different language, different priorities and a general rejuvenation of the party are among the new leader’s means to achieve political influence and power. Marine Le Pen shaped a political message permeated with French republicanism rhetoric, browsing through notions of equality, freedom, resistance to the oppressor, national priority and a strong state supplemented by a rigid understanding of the French concept of laïcité. Most columnists and experts agree that Marine Le Pen strives to achieve this (termed ‘operation seduction de Marine Le Pen’; Peña-Ruiz 2011) by switching from classic ‘old’ issues of anti-Semitism and racism to new issues, such as the Islamisation of the country, the loss of French values and identity, flavoured with ‘a more social party image’ and ‘rhetoric’ (Østergaard 2011b; Laurent 2011) attacking big money power and the effects of globalisation.
It is important to notice that the qualities considered specific to Marine Le Pen – those that allow her to follow new strategies by constructing her as different from her father – are mostly associated with women in politics. For example, Marine Le Pen is considered to have self-control and kindness, contrary to her father. Whereas Jean-Marie is strong and impulsive, always risks going too far, saying bad words or being too extreme, Marine refrains from outrageous action or speech. Several articles evoke her ability to ‘control herself, her feelings and anger’ by ‘avoiding provocations, contrary to her father and to the majority of the FN cadres’ (Forcari 2011). Her experience and greater familiarity with the mainstream media and the press give her ‘a more consensual and moderate image than that of her father, [counteracting] the repulsion to vote for the Front National’ (Forcari 2011).
According to the same logic, her mission benefits from her natural feeling for media appeal and abstention from support to traditional extreme right-wing positions that characterised Jean-Marie Le Pen – e.g. WWII, Algeria, French colonialism and racism. Jean-Marie Le Pen’s portrayal of his daughter’s rise is characteristic. In 2005, he commented to the press that ‘Marine is very kind (gentille), but nobody’s interested in a kind Front National’. At that time, he was explicitly rejecting his daughter’s attempts to restyle the party. Marine Le Pen tried again six years later, and recent developments in the party show that she is no longer afraid of contradicting her father (Østergaard 2015) or even expelling him from the party cadres, despite his reaction.
In this sense, the gendered representations of Marine Le Pen are constructed on the similarities with, and differences from, her father, rather than on her being the first FN female leader. These factors also seem to have influenced her media representations.
Marine Le Pen is not only the subject of numerous books; she is herself a prolific autobiographer. Between 2006 and 2012, she published two books: À contre flots (Against the Waves) (Le Pen 2011 and Pour que vive la France (So that France May Live Long!) (Le Pen 2012). The first is an intimate book of confidences (a so-called livre de confidences) about her private and public life; the second book is her political manifesto, printed a year after she was elected FN leader, which discusses major issues, such as the effects of globalisation, French identity and values and her views about the country’s political priorities.
The first book, in particular, seems driven by a wish to blur or rather bridge the gap between the private and the public Le Pen. It describes her life from childhood to adulthood and delves into family affairs, like her relationship with her parents, her mother abandoning the family when she was young, her parents’ divorce, the beginning of her political career, her life as a divorced mother of three and so forth. The style of the book is intimate, direct, detailed. Her father and FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen is directly and indirectly the ever-present figure in the narrative. Being the daughter of what she describes as a demonised and politically marginalised man becomes the leitmotiv behind her political engagement, motivations and reactions. The resulting image is of a woman formed and fortified in an environment threatened by the general hostility and misunderstandings of the outside world, represented by mainstream society and politics. She writes (Le Pen 2006: 185–186): ‘[…] nothing was easy. We remained Le Pen’s daughters and we knew why. We had to feel it always’. She often underlines the costs of this lifestyle on her private emotions:
My status as Le Pen’s daughter was a burden for the men in my life. Sharing my life meant endorsing everything I had been through […] since childhood: the attacks, the details, the electoral campaigns, Carpentras, tortures, the naked mother in Playboy and tutti quanti […] going out with Le Pen’s daughter, bring her along to the friends’ houses, introducing her to his family […]. It takes a really strong character.
This form of self-experienced marginalisation becomes a way to frame private Marine as close to other ‘victims’ and those who are socially and economically marginalised in society. Similarly, her experiences as divorced mother of three is an example of surviving life that brings her closer to many other single mothers in French society, making her – the daughter of Le Pen – less privileged and closer to what she defines as her ‘feminism’ (Le Pen 2006: 188):
The birth of my sons, my divorce, the time when I was alone with them, all of that made me almost a feminist, because it is true that women are really brave, because their situation is often and objectively more difficult than men’s. Women have to endure a ‘double penalty’: an intensive job and a family life, and everything with a smile! When you’re a woman, you don’t know the ‘35 hours-a-week’ rule.
The narrative, genre and style are quite different in Pour que vive la France, her political manifesto. This book is devoid of intimate narrative and develops around the double objective of criticising current French politics and the French political elite, which is held responsible for the national decline and for what the author sees as the impending death of French national sovereignty.
The analysis of three female political leaders of right-wing populist parties uncovers a number of issues that need to be explored further in future studies of women political leaders. One issue is the relation between female politicians, political power and gender. Another is the relationship between female political leaders, the media presentation and their self-representation. Finally, the most complex issue is to what extent the similarities and differences between the three cases of right-wing populist parties’ female leaders should be attributed to: (1) the different perceptions of women political leaders in the three contexts; (2) the differences in party profiles; and (3) their personal attributes, styles and rhetoric.
The scholarly interest in the role of women political leaders and whether and how their personal experiences impact on women in politics more generally, is growing. We observed that there is no direct causality between the female gender of the party leader and the three parties’ approach to gender politics. Pia Kjærsgaard, Siv Jensen and Marine Le Pen were all elected leaders by (mostly) male voters in male-dominated milieus, and their leadership style followed that of strong authoritarian men who like to, and purposely emphasise, their masculinity. The three women only engage actively in gender politics, before or after their appointment, to address gender equality opportunistically and often in connection with ethnic minority women, predominantly of Muslim faith who are considered to have submitted to men and to religious dogmas.
This chapter also examined whether female leaders are primarily targets/ objects of gendered media stereotypes, and to what extent they counteract gendered stereotypes by framing their own image and/or self-portraying their role as women leaders. All three seem to have understood the importance of influencing the media. Their media strategy is often characterised by counterbalancing the image of strong authoritarian female leaders who might estrange voters with an alternative image: by presenting themselves as the loving mother and caring housewife (Kjærsgaard), the self-made woman (Jensen) or stressing that they belong to a new and younger entrepreneurial generation (Le Pen), these women have successfully followed decades of male-dominated leadership without dramatic changes in political profile and form.
We expected the heritage of strong women in politics to be comparatively less threatening in Denmark and Norway than in France, since the two Scandinavian countries have a longer history of women in politics, albeit particularly with the political left wing. We found that the media have been friendlier towards Siv Jensen than Pia Kjærsgaard, who, especially at the beginning, polarised the press. There is no doubt that the French media has been hostile towards Marine Le Pen. This could, however, be explained by the combination of the FN politics and historical heritage and by more hostile attitudes to women politicians in France. It could also be related to timing and development: Pia Kjærsgaard’s and Siv Jensen’s parties have been ‘normalised’ by the press, by political opinion and mainstream politics. This has not been the case for the FN.
The final issue is whether the three have different relations to feminism and gender equality, and to what extent this is influenced by the effect of political institutions, politics and culture. All three present themselves as representatives ‘of the people’ against mainstream politics and the political elites. Pia Kjærsgaard and Siv Jensen agree that there is no longer need for a focus on feminism or gender equality policies in the Nordic countries. In fact, they hold that these countries have already gone far enough, perhaps even too far. In contrast, Marine Le Pen constructs herself as marginalised, both due to her politics and to her gender. She is thus able to use gender to criticise the way French politics still marginalises ‘difference’ and to signal the need for a radical change that, in her view, the FN represents.
1 The DF leadership’s argues that the party would be more influential outside the government than by joining it (see Riis Lund 2015 and Thulesen Dahl at: http://politik.tv2.dk/valg2015/2015-06-28-df-derfor-sagde-vi-nej-til-regering). This was probably based on its prior experience as support party to the Liberal–Conservative minority cabinet (2001–2011).
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