From norm breaking to norm making: anti-feminist reactionary norm building in international politics

International women’s rights are under attack from a broad coalition of governments and non-governmental organizations at the United Nations. Drawing support from religious conservatives and emergent patriarchal populists, opponents of women’s rights and sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) rights seek to undermine sexual and reproductive health and rights norms and recognition of diverse gender roles, identities, and families. A hospitable global political opportunity structure has allowed actors to move from resisting and spoiling rights to attempting to replace them with rival norms. Building on research into how international norms advance and regress, we argue that women’s and SOGI rights are now threatened by ascendant alternative norms. We analyze the dynamics of what we call reactionary international norm building, which seeks to change the normative consensus by replacing established rights. Reactionary international norm building against women’s and SOGI rights is revisionist, altering the grounding and sources of rights as well as their content; retrotopian, evoking an imagined traditional past; and radical, retracting basic rights protections and even encouraging violence. Moving between international and domestic political analysis, with an emphasis on the reactionary norm entrepreneurship of Trumpism and Putinism, we trace how these three characteristics illuminate efforts to institutionalize anti-feminist norms.