Woman’s Identity as a Field of Ontological (In)Security: Populist Discourse and Integrated Threats

Abstract

The polarizing discourse established by populism between the ‘real people’ and ‘others’ frequently positions gender roles and woman’s identity at the center of a political battleground. Within this framework, this study examines how populist actors construct woman’s identity as a threat while simultaneously instrumentalizing it as a fragile value that must be protected.

Ontological security refers to the fundamental trust that individuals and groups place in the stability of their identities and existential continuity. Populist politics, by presenting traditional family structures and gender roles as the cornerstone of national identity, labels women who do not conform to these norms or who challenge them—along with feminist movements—as a ‘threat’. This situation undermines women’s ontological security, as the relevant discourses continually push their identities, self-perceptions, and social roles into a realm of interrogation and insecurity.

Integrated Threat Theory provides a significant analytical foundation for understanding this process. Populist discourse encodes women’s demands for emancipation and any movement that questions gender-based power hierarchies as a symbolic threat to the in-group’s (the people’s) values, traditions, and way of life. Stephan and Stephan’s theory elucidates how this perception of symbolic threat fuels prejudice and hostility toward the out-group (progressive women or feminists). This study conducted using purposeful sampling within the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis and the Discourse-History Approach, focusing on Hungary, Poland, Spain, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Sweden, reveals that the ontological insecurity engendered by populist politics renders woman’s identity the target of a multilayered threat perception.