Antifeminist backlash

Antifeminist backlash refers to organized resistance against feminist movements, theories, and achievements. It encompasses individual, collective, institutional, and transnational efforts to delegitimize, undermine, or reverse progress in gender equality. Often cyclical and reactive, backlash arises in response to perceived threats to traditional gender roles and power hierarchies. The term gained prominence through Susan Faludi's Backlash (1991), which described the cultural and institutional undermining of feminist gains. Contemporary scholarship expands this understanding, highlighting backlash as a complex phenomenon embedded in broader ideological formations such as neoliberalism, populism, authoritarianism, and ethnonationalism. It manifests through legislative rollbacks, media misrepresentation, and digital misogyny, often weaponizing feminism's language for antifeminist ends. Critics of the term emphasize the need for nuanced, intersectional frameworks that address backlash's diverse forms and contexts. As both a political and epistemological project, antifeminist backlash aims not only to resist feminist change but to restore perceived traditional social orders.