In 1980, Gertrud Scholz-Klink, the once ruthless leader of the Nazi Women's Bureau in Berlin from 1934 to 1945, described her former position to historian Claudia Kunz as "influencing women in their everyday lives."
Her audience - approximately 4 million girls in the Hitler Youth, 8 million women in Nazi associations under her jurisdiction, and 1,9 million subscribers to her women's magazine Frauen Warte (Women's Watch), according to Kunz - was exposed to propaganda that she called "the cradle and the ladle," that is, reproductive and domestic duties as the foundation of national strength.
“There were a whole series of women’s magazines that glorified housewives” in Nazi Germany, says Kunz, an emeritus professor of history at Duke University. “That would be the equivalent of social media today.” Frauen Warte didn’t feature anything overly political — it was mostly engaging “lifestyle” content about how to keep a clean and well-stocked home while raising a healthy family, with the occasional discussion about how much makeup a woman should wear. A natural look was favored — similar to today’s “clean girl” trend. “In a censored society, everyone needs discussions about innocuous topics,” Kunz adds.
Kunz is well-versed in the ways in which political autocrats use women’s domestic labor to enforce state ideology. Her 1986 book “Mothers in the Fatherland” describes how ordinary women in Nazi Germany “operated at its very heart,” fostering ideals of white supremacy, female subordination, and family sacrifice.
Thinkers such as the 20th-century German theorist Theodor Adorno and the contemporary American political philosopher George Lakoff have considered the paternalistic personality of authoritarian regimes, with Lakoff emphasizing that in modern history, far-right authoritarian regimes institutionalize male rule through a family-like hierarchy: women are subordinate to men, and both are subject to the nation as a metaphorical “strict father.” In the home, paternal authority and maternal subordination mold children for the larger social order, teaching them to see female subservience as stability and to accept fear and conformity as the price of belonging.
“There’s a reluctance to call this moment fascism,” says cultural historian Tiffany Florville, “but the extreme authoritarian dynamics are clearly visible on the American right today.” (Indeed, Trump supporters don’t stop calling him “Dad.”)
The unprecedented deportations of immigrants; the use of ICE to unjustly detain people in centers where human rights are violated; the intimidation of judges, law firms, and universities; and the attacks on the basic principles of liberal democracy - all of which are encouraging historians specializing in fascism to leave the country.
“A woman’s most glorious duty is to give children to her people and nation, children who can continue the lineage of generations and who guarantee the immortality of the nation,” Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels told an audience of women in 1933.
At the same time, a significant assault on gender equality is underway. The idea that women's bodies are a state resource for population maintenance is once again coming to the fore; the Trump administration is encouraging traditional roles by eliminating equality in the workplace, restricting reproductive rights, and controlling gender identity.
“The most glorious duty of a woman is to give children to her people and nation, children who can continue the lineage of generations and who guarantee the immortality of the nation,” Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels told an audience of women in 1933. Racially selective population growth was a key part of the agenda of nationalist, fascist regimes such as Nazi Germany and Benito Mussolini’s Italy. The path to honor for most women was childbearing, which was formalized through financial rewards and medals for mothers with many children.
Similarly, the Trump administration is promoting pro-natal rewards, such as a $1.000 government investment account for every newborn baby, and other measures have been considered, including a “National Medal of Motherhood” for women with six children. While Vice President J.D. Vance exclaimed at an anti-abortion rally in early 2025, “I want more babies in the United States,” Republicans in Congress have planned to eliminate federal tax breaks for daycare and other forms of support that enable women to participate in the workforce—an attempt to control women’s social roles.
The administration’s policies suggest that the goal is not just population growth, but more white births in particular. By rolling back reproductive rights to a greater extent than at any time in the past 50 years, the Trump administration has laid the groundwork for a worsening maternal mortality rate—particularly among black women, who die in childbirth at nearly three and a half times the rate of white women. The administration has also shown hostility toward people of color, separating immigrant families, restricting immigration, and ordering the rescission of birthright citizenship.
Fascist pro-natalism policies rely on the illusion of white, Christian “family values”—a strategy reminiscent of the work of Scholz-Klink, the Nazi proto-influencer who offered a picture of a sweet and peaceful life by promoting “children, kitchen, and church” (Kinder, Küche, Kirche). When she gave interviews, Scholz-Klink insisted to Claudia Kunz that she and her associates had nothing to do with concentration camps, genocide, or political doctrine—that they knew almost nothing about these things. Instead, Scholz-Klink made domestic and reproductive duties seem prestigious rather than imposed, helping the Nazi party “to make ordinary women feel valued in a way that women in more liberal parties were denied,” Kunz says.
Motherhood can be deeply fulfilling, and few would dispute the importance of family life. Yet authoritarian movements have long politicized it, turning it into a woman’s sole purpose and a substitute for autonomy and rights. National instability only reinforces the message that a woman’s proper place is in the home with her children. “If there is chaos,” says Kunz, “then women who keep the home front stable have an even greater responsibility: ‘There is chaos outside, but my family will live by traditional values.’”
As authoritarian regimes grow stronger, they often rely on women’s movements to keep society stable and functional at the household level, presenting regressive policies in more attractive and accessible terms. This is especially true for fascist regimes, which depend on mass participation to pursue their extreme nationalist goals. Today, this role is being taken over by the digital “womanosphere,” also known as the femo-sphere.
A counterpart to the “manosphere,” an influential online space filled with misogyny, the femosphere is an informal network of internet creators who rally around normative femininity. Its idea of femininity is shaped by anti-queer views, white supremacy, fundamentalist Christianity, and traditional maternalism. It also fits into the extreme, discriminatory agenda of Project 2025, which aims to undo historical victories of the women’s movement such as equality in the workplace, education, and healthcare.
These values are promoted by conservative millennial and Gen Z content creators, including Alex Clark, host of the wellness podcast Culture Apothecary; “professional chatterbox” Brett Cooper; YouTuber Isabelle Brown; conservative provocateur Candice Owens; anti-trans activist and podcaster Riley Gaines; Christian influencer Ali Beth Stuckey; and publications like Evie magazine, which has been called “the conservative Cosmo.” Charlie Kirk’s conservative student organization, Turning Point USA, hosts an annual women’s summit that focuses on marriage, childbearing, and homemaking.
Femosphere content ranges from overtly political to what may at first glance appear to be a simple lifestyle aesthetic. These nostalgic visions of beauty—healthy, aspirational depictions of gardening, cooking, health care, and motherhood, embodied by “trad” (traditional) home-based influencers like Hana Nilman and Sara Terez—are very appealing. While not all “cottagecore” creators are conservative preachers, this type of content has been recognized for its role in the “alt-right” channel, where liberating innovations like contraception are portrayed as “toxic,” and the ideal status of a woman is reduced to being married, barefoot, and pregnant.
The femosphere glorifies the joys of home and motherhood, while suppressing the growing social and political marginalization of women, ultimately reinforcing fascist values such as gender hierarchy and duty to the nation. For Klaudija Kunc, it all feels like a repetition of the same formula: “children, kitchen and church” - only in the digital age.
In the femosphere, women belong in the home: good, normal women want to stay there. This digital movement reflects what feminist media theorist Dr. Jilly Boyce Kay calls “reactionary feminism,” an anti-progressive resistance that claims that “commitment, attachment, and protection” are women’s “evolutionarily determined interests,” with little room for nuance.
The femosphere offers individualistic strategies of rebellion against the perceived liberal status quo, but in doing so it actually reinforces ancient gender hierarchies. Namely, if a woman is financially dependent on her husband, she is freed from the burden of paid employment and can devote herself entirely to the household, rather than dividing her time between work and home. The enormous pressure on women to simultaneously work and do most of the housework - as well as the public health crisis of parental burnout - make these arguments seductive.
However, the content of the femosphere often masks complex material realities; for example, the conditions that made single-parent households more sustainable in the 1950s no longer exist. Attacks on reproductive rights actually limit the futures that women can choose, and without financial independence, they are often unable to leave situations of domestic violence.
Women like Scholz-Klink seized a historically rare opportunity to stand out in authoritarian regimes by becoming their spokespeople; today, this does not require any official sanction (although political groups fund content creators through often opaque campaigns). The attention economy itself offers incentives, and by countering gender equality, women easily become algorithmic gold. The hypocrisy is obvious: creators in the femosphere often advocate the wisdom of withdrawing from the “sphere of market-mediated labor,” while in fact monetizing their content, says Sophie Lewis, a feminist theorist.
Femosphere influencers often post casually misogynistic content. Recently, influencer Alex Clark, who boasts about her “sly” tactics for spreading ideology through wellness content, hosted a guest who claimed that when women “enter a man’s space” — by showing anger, assertiveness, or authority — it “literally kills them,” citing rising breast cancer rates as evidence. The clip suggests that, for the sake of their own health, women should remain meek and calm.
But patriarchal politics hurt women, even those who participate in it: Georgia’s far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene told the Daily Mail in August that there are “women in our party who are really tired and disgusted with the way [Republican] men treat Republican women.” Republicans know they can’t get an abortion when they need one. Cooper, a femosphere creator, admitted to The New York Times that right-wing colleagues called her “crazy” for working while pregnant. Lauren Southern, a Canadian influencer who rose to fame by posting content critical of feminism and immigration, recently published a memoir in which she admits to being emotionally tortured in her traditionalist marriage. “The unhappiest people I’ve ever met were trapped in this weird, fake ‘trad’ dynamic,” Southern said in an interview in May.
Fascism may betray women, but it still relies on their support.
Mussolini's Fascist Italy created an image of modernization, economic growth, and agricultural abundance from the 1920s to the 1940s. But after Mussolini alienated trading partners, Italy's reliance on domestic produce led to food shortages so severe that Italians did not even have enough wheat for pasta. In her 2022 book, Feeding Fascism: The Politics of Women's Labor in Food, Garvin writes that the state's propaganda narrative of domestic idyll concealed a systemic reliance on women's unpaid labor in the home; mothers were expected to overcome food shortages through their ingenuity and hard work.
Cutting back on education seems less threatening when you are convinced that it is your role to educate your own children; a less secure and more expensive food supply seems less problematic when you believe that everyone should grow their own produce; defunding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t seem so bad when you have been taught not to trust vaccines and think you can cure smallpox with “herbal remedies or ancient folk medicine.”
Italian lifestyle magazines like “La Cucina Italiana” sought to cover up the food shortages caused by Mussolini’s mismanagement and turn them into a source of individual pride, publishing photos of girls growing prize-winning vegetables and offering recipes based on leftover rice. The government wanted women to cover up its failures and “be happy about it,” says Garvin.
Similar efforts may be needed in the US as Donald Trump dismantles what remains of an already meager social safety net. The administration has slashed funding for health care and the Environmental Protection Agency; dismantled the Department of Education, reducing access and equity for children; and degraded systems designed to ensure food security, including by cutting staff at the Food and Drug Administration.
Under the pretext of a return to rugged individualism, the Trump administration is abdicating responsibility for America’s needs. In July, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security posted a kitschy illustration of a pioneer couple holding a baby on social media, with the caption “Remember the heritage of your homeland.” The message was clear: Americans should be proud of their resilience while remaining on their own.
Femosphere influencers groom women to romanticize duty and encourage them to dismiss feminist political engagement as “woke nonsense.” They help to divert the national debate from how government can invest in communities through benefits like better housing security, paid maternity leave, universal health coverage, and accessible, affordable child care. Democrats’ failure to adequately support and value women has allowed the right to exploit widespread discontent, convincing women to expect less from a nation that could provide more.
Without adequate and accessible health care, food, and education, mothers can end up as de facto homeschoolers, farmers, and nurses. “Trad” influencers embellish this unfair burden by presenting it as a tribute to farm life (and use it to promote unfounded “cures”), rather than calling it what it is: a takeover of what the government should be doing. Cutting back on education seems less threatening when you’re convinced that your role is to educate your own children; a less safe and more expensive food supply seems less of a problem when you believe that everyone should grow their own produce; defunding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t seem so bad when you’ve been taught not to trust vaccines and think you can cure smallpox with “herbal remedies or ancient folk medicine.”
Mussolini’s government also “really wanted to push women out of middle-class jobs to open those positions for men, because there was a serious employment issue,” says Garvin. The nation used the cultural trope of the “donna-crisi,” or “woman in crisis”—a negative stereotype of the urban and independent woman, similar to the contemporary American right-wing notion of “victim feminism” or J.D. Vance’s “sceneless catwoman”—to denigrate working women. Yet while propaganda promoted an image of middle- and upper-class women protected from work, the reality was more calculated, says Garvin: Fascist Italy wanted women from lower classes in the workforce, where they could be paid less than men.
In July, the Trump administration imposed new work requirements for Medicaid, the federal-state program that provides health care to more than 77 million low-income people, 80 percent of whom are women with an average age of 40. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins suggested that these women could work on American farms to keep their health insurance, replacing deported immigrants. For all their promises of domestic idyll, classic European fascist regimes sent housewives to factories and fields when labor was scarce. Consequently, it is women who are ultimately expected to bear the brunt of the state’s failures.
Women who become obedient housewives and caregivers may consciously, even joyfully, accept this role. They may believe that they see a fundamental truth in dependence—the price of security—believing that patriarchy will protect them as long as they keep the house spotless and bake bread with a smile. Yet many fail to consider the influence of hypocritical propaganda on their choices—or the consequences of conforming to tyranny that may turn against them.
Instead of freedom, equality, power, and choice, the Trump regime offers women flattery and a deceptively simplistic worldview that denies them a role. While women are central to the Maga project, some of its supporters are beginning to realize that traditional life is not just an idyllic fantasy of the past, but a harbinger of a bleak future. Life on the patriarchal estate may not be as rosy as it seems.
The text is taken from "The Guardian"
Prepared by: NB
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