Co-opting rights, reframing development: anti-gender politics and the logics of smart economics

This article examines the convergence between anti-gender/pro-family advocacy and neoliberal development paradigms within global governance institutions, with a particular focus on United Nations spaces. While much existing scholarship frames anti-gender politics as backlash, we argue that these movements strategically align with dominant ‘smart economics’ discourses that instrumentalise cisgender, heterosexual women and girls in their reproductive years as drivers of sustainable development. Drawing on feminist and queer critiques of heteropatriarchal development frameworks and global governance, we analyse how anti-gender actors are professionalising, institutionalising, and secularising their messaging to advance exclusionary agendas under the guise of neutrality and rigour. The article adopts a qualitative, interpretive methodology based on a purposive sample of artefacts produced by leading anti-gender organisations. Our analysis reveals how these actors co-opt the language of rights and sustainable development to legitimise pro-family politics and reframe global norms in ways that reinforce heteropatriarchal authority. Rather than contesting the global development order, anti-gender actors exploit its heteronormative underpinnings, thereby complicating simplistic accounts of a normative ‘backlash’. In light of the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action that set out ambitious global commitments to gender equality, our analysis underscores the need for a structural critique of gender and development discourse and practice.