The Sweden Democrats (SD) was the first radical right populist party (RRPP) to be elected to the Swedish Parliament in 2010, and today it is an established and important force in Swedish politics. The SD have the lowest proportion of female members of all parties in the Swedish Parliament, and also retain the view that there are biological and cognitive differences that affect men’s and women’s roles in society. There is, however, a growing tendency to emphasize the need for gender equality and even feminism in the party. Previous research (Mulinari & Neergaard 2013; Towns, Karlsson & Eyre 2014) has dismissed these attempts as rhetorical duplicity aiming at constructing immigrants as an out-group. In this paper we analyse interviews conducted with women representatives of the SD in local, regional and national assemblies. By mapping ideas about gender and equality and by identifying the ontological scales on which they exist, we paint a picture of a party with a dynamic and sometimes contradictory understanding of gender equality. Several gender equality discourses co-exist in SD ideology, but their inconsistency is caused by changes in context rather than by purposeful ambiguity.

The Sweden Democrats (SD) was the first radical right populist party (RRPP) to be elected to the Swedish Parliament in 2010, and today it is an established and important force in Swedish politics. The SD have the lowest proportion of female members of all parties in the Swedish Parliament, and also retain a traditionalist view that there are biological and cognitive differences that affect men’s and women’s roles in society. There is, however, a growing tendency to emphasize the need for equality and even feminism in the party. Previous research has dismissed this as rhetorical duplicity aiming at defining immigrants as an out-group. In this paper we analyse interviews conducted with women representative for the SD in local, regional and national assemblies. By mapping ideas about gender and equality and by identifying the ontological scales on which they occur, we paint a picture of a party with a dynamic and sometimes contradictory understanding of equality. Several equality discourses co-exist in SD ideology, but their use is the result of contextual application rather than purposeful ambiguity.