Left Populism and Feministization of Politics. Podemos’ Organization through the Lens of its Feminist Discourse

• In Event: 2131 - Race, Sexuality, and Gender in Politics

Abstract

Using the case of the Spanish political party Podemos, this paper examines the possibilities and challenges to implement feminist politics within a left populist organization. Embracing populism in response to the legitimation crisis of the ruling political class, Podemos commits to a gender-informed interpretation of democratic renewal based on the “feminization of politics.” Nonetheless, Podemos struggles to perform key elements of its feminist commitments, such as collaborative and decentralized leaderships, processes of consensus decision-making, horizontal and bottom-up democratic structures, and dialogue with a plurality of actors. Through participant observation and semi-structured interviews with the party grassroots members, I identify a series of conflicting patterns within Podemos’ organization. My analysis illustrates how the practices of Podemos recreate: top-down structures, adversarial dynamics, charismatic and masculine leaderships, the reproduction of dominant gender and age patterns, and the prioritization of bureaucracy and institutional politics. I argue that the discrepancy between Podemos’ discourse and practices reveals how the party’s institutionalized politics privilege a specific understanding of empowerment, characterized by the tacit acceptance of dominant masculine traits—such as competition, confrontation and hierarchy—as both normative in political power relations, and unavoidable features of political organization, communication, and leadership. The translation of this notion of empowerment into the prioritization of electoral politics, political communication and strategy leads Podemos to reproduce the gendered culture of traditional and mainstream parties that the party openly problematizes. This paper engages with recent invitations to expand the research on populism from a gender perspective, expanding the focus beyond right-wing actors and contributing to the ongoing debate about what type of relation, if any, feminist politics entertain with populist forces.

Author

• Paloma Caravantes, Rutgers University