The International Anti-Gender Movement: Understanding the Rise of Anti-Gender Discourses in the Context of Development, Human Rights and Social Protection

In this working paper, we interrogate the ways anti-gender, or “pro-family”, actors and organizations are using the frameworks and language of “development” to advance arguments and policies that restrict the rights of LGBTIQ+ people and seek to limit how we understand sexual and reproductive health and rights. Support and funding for extensive and growing anti-gender movements is a transnational endeavour, with movements of both people and finance within and between the global North and global South. While organizations and activists who oppose abortion, LGBTIQ+ rights, and comprehensive sexuality education have long cited moral and religious justifications for their intolerance, these so-called “pro-family” actors are increasingly deploying economic and social arguments that enable them to frame their views as essential to the realization of broader development goals. These movements convene at the global level, including through UN institutions, and in so doing, anti-gender groups have devised strategies for centring the “family” as a key site of contestation in ways that invoke notions of rights and sustainability at national, regional and international policy levels. We also explore the increasing professionalization that underpins anti-gender advocacy. There is a growing network of self-styled think tanks funded by anti-gender movements that use mainstream knowledge validation tools, including peer-review articles, policy briefs and webinars, to disseminate anti-gender messages in a range of global development spaces, including the UN system. These efforts are shrouded in the twin cloaks of “neutrality” and “rigour”, rendering anti-gender messaging harder to refute.