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Anti-gender movement expands across Europe, with Western countries increasingly affected

by Timothy••1

No country in Europe is now untouched by the anti-gender movement, while its influence has continued to grow over the past 25 years, according to a new study published by Brussels-based civil society organisation Forbidden Colours.

‘The Hate Review‘ examines the development of the anti-gender movement across the 46 member states of the Council of Europe, and Russia from the mid-1990s to May 2026. It finds that, by the latest five-year period covered by the research, from 2021 to 2025, none of the 47 countries remained in the lowest category of what the study calls “anti-gender contamination”.

The term refers to the spread of anti-gender actors, mobilisation and narratives through society. The report defines the movement broadly, covering organisations and individuals campaigning against reproductive rights and the rights of LGBTIQ+ people.

Its research is based on more than 3,200 individually sourced examples of anti-gender activity and actors, including political parties, religious institutions, think tanks, parents’ groups, civil society organisations, litigation groups, street movements and media outlets.

Western Europe is not immune

The study finds that the strongest levels of anti-gender “contamination” are not confined to countries where anti-gender forces have taken control of the state.

Russia, Georgia, Hungary, Azerbaijan, and Turkey (Türkiye) are among the countries where the movement has achieved state capture, according to the report. But Italy, Spain, Romania, and the United Kingdom also rank among the countries with the highest levels of contamination in 2025. France, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovenia, and Portugal are described as being close behind.

The findings challenge the idea that anti-gender politics is primarily an eastern or central European phenomenon. According to the report, Western and Southern European countries have become major arenas for the movement.

Vincent Reillon, the report’s author, said the development was closely linked to the progress made on LGBTIQ+ and reproductive rights over the past decades. The study argues that the legal and social advances achieved since 2000 also helped trigger the mobilisation of groups seeking to oppose or reverse them.

From protest movements to political power

The study identifies a shift in the movement’s organisation and political influence.

During the 2000s and early 2010s, anti-gender activism increasingly developed its own civil society infrastructure, including think tanks, media outlets and parents’ groups. Coordinating movements such as France’s La Manif pour tous, founded in 2012, helped bring different actors together.

Since 2016, the report identifies a growing move into formal politics. It records around 52 anti-gender political parties founded across 32 countries, most of them associated with far-right or nationalist-populist politics.

According to the study, this political shift has also changed the movement’s success rate. Anti-gender actors succeeded in less than 30% of the contests recorded 20 years ago. In the most recent period, their success rate has risen above 50%. For the first time, the most common outcome recorded in the study is the defeat of the progressive measure being opposed.

The movement has also increasingly moved from opposing existing initiatives to proposing its own restrictions. In the past five years, measures targeting LGBTIQ+ rights or abortion that were initiated by anti-gender actors have become the largest single category in the study’s dataset.

Parliaments have continued to reject or withdraw around two-thirds of anti-gender bills, according to the report. But the study identifies executive action as a more effective route: implemented anti-LGBTIQ+ regulations have recently been five times more frequent than adopted anti-gender laws.

Reillon said the findings showed that progressive legislation alone could not guarantee that rights would be maintained. Laws could be challenged and reversed if an organised movement developed sufficient political power to dismantle them, he argued.

Contamination proves difficult to reverse

The study also finds that once anti-gender activity becomes established in a country, it is difficult to reverse.

Across the 25-year period examined, the report says none of the 47 countries experienced an overall decline in anti-gender contamination.

Poland is the only country identified as having moved out of the highest category of state capture, following its change of government in 2023. However, the report says the impact of the movement on laws and institutions has so far changed little.

The study also links the growth of the anti-gender movement to a shrinking space for civil society. It says the relationship between anti-gender impact and restrictions on civil society has strengthened from almost no correlation at the beginning of the period to a strong correlation today.

That, according to the report, makes it increasingly difficult for feminist and LGBTIQ+ organisations to challenge the movement in countries where it has become more established.

Reillon said the movement therefore represented a broader challenge than opposition to LGBTIQ+ rights, reproductive rights or women’s rights. As it becomes more entrenched, he argued, it can also weaken independent media, civic freedoms and institutional checks on political power.

A European movement

The report concludes that responding to individual restrictive laws may not be sufficient because the networks and actors behind them remain in place.

Instead, it calls for earlier intervention in countries where anti-gender activity is already widespread but its political impact remains relatively limited, as well as greater cross-border cooperation.

‘The Hate Review’ covers 47 countries: the 46 members of the Council of Europe and Russia. Its dataset contains more than 3,200 individually sourced elements, including more than 2,500 documented activities and more than 700 organisations, networks and individuals.

The report measures the development and impact of the anti-gender movement rather than the overall state of LGBTIQ+ rights in each country. A country’s score reflects what anti-gender actors have built and achieved, rather than the adequacy of its legislation or government response.

The full report, country profiles, data and figures are available from Forbidden Colours.

LGBTQIA+ and travel

🇧🇪 Blogger, keen vexillologist, train conductor NMBS/SNCB, traveller, F1 follower, friend of Dorothy.

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