The (Anti)Feminism of Tradwives

Background: While networked misogyny and the manosphere have received increased research attention in the wake of various violent attacks, women involved in online networks that reflect antifeminist or misogynistic ideas are less well researched. One such online community is the emerging “tradwife” community. While definitions of tradwife vary, tradwives are generally considered part of the spectrum of alt-right, conservative, or extremist subcultures while living “traditional” lifestyles with ultraconservative gender roles in their families (e.g., a male breadwinner and a submissive female homemaker). This paper explores the antifeminism expressed by 60 TikTok users who utilized “tradwife” or “tradlife” hashtags to answer the exploratory research question: How do tradwives explain their relationship to, and understanding of, feminism specifically in terms of gender roles and their identity as tradwives?

Methods: To bring up users that were relevant to the tradwife trend, there were five different hashtags related to tradwife/tradlife variations used in two different searches. We utilized a modified grounded theory approach to gain a wider understanding of the women’s narratives around gender, gender relations, and feminism/femininity, with a focus on the phenomenological approach toward understanding their lived experiences with femininity and feminism. Researchers watched all of the users’ videos dating back until 2020 when the increase in tradwives on social media began. Utilizing the emerging recommendations for “netnography,” the users were analyzed based on factors such as: 1) their appearance/the aesthetics of the video, 2) their specific verbalizations during recordings, 3) hashtags that were utilized, and 4) video description text. However, the researchers chose not to code comments from other users on each video, because the research question focuses on tradwives’ self-definitions and not the networking of ideas. Two reviewers generated initial codes after watching roughly a quarter of the 60 users’ videos, then met to discuss preliminary codes and axial codes. After watching half the videos the reviewers compared codes and axial codes a second time, then completed the remaining 30 users’ videos.

Results: Results of a thematic analysis show that these women were a diverse community with many complementary and competing ideologies, but that antifeminism was shared across the majority of users. Four main themes emerged that characterized their antifeminism, including the idea that feminism was antagonistic to femininity, that feminism was harming women, rejecting “boss babes” and other capitalist demands, and more vitriolic attacks on gender diversity. Overall, the tradwives correctly identified the problems women face trying to be both full time employees and full time homemakers, but inaccurately attribute this difficulty to feminism itself rather than the patriarchal and capitalist structures feminism attempts to dismantle.

Implications: Implications for understanding women’s role in perpetuating antifeminist and misogynist spaces on the internet will be discussed. While anti-feminist, the spaces were not “anti-woman,” and the tradwife desire to help women is a potential entrypoint for common ground with feminist goals to challenge structures that limit women’s choices (including to be feminine) and challenge current capitalist structures that limit women from choosing work OR choosing families (or both).