The Hate Review

Key indicators in 2025: Contamination 2.33 / 4  ·  Impact 1.78 / 4

The trajectory of anti-gender activity in Austria has evolved through three broad phases. From the early 2000s through the mid-2010s, the dominant actors were the Catholic Church and the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP), whose opposition to civil partnership, same-sex marriage and adoption relied on natural law and family protection arguments. From around 2012, “gender ideology” emerged as a broader mobilising frame, first deployed in controversies over inclusive sex education and later extended to gender-inclusive language, trans identities and LGBTIQ+ visibility. The third phase, from 2017 onwards, saw the Freedom Party (FPÖ) displace the Church as the primary anti-gender actor, dramatically escalating parliamentary output and disinformation, while regional governments — particularly in Lower Austria and Styria — began using administrative measures to restrict gender-inclusive language and LGBTIQ+ visibility. A defining feature of the Austrian context throughout has been the tension between federal institutional resilience and regional-level activism, with courts repeatedly acting as a corrective to executive overreach.