The far-right are weaponising feminism, womanhood (specifically white women’s) and women’s safety, to further their anti-immigration agenda. Again.
Anti-migrant sentiment has rippled through the UK this summer, with right-wing press stirring up misinformation, small demonstrations outside hotels housing asylum seekers almost every weekend, and Reform dominating political discourse. One of the most consistent, racist and xenophobic messages has been the claim that the (white) women of Britain need “protecting” from men migrating to the UK. Reform leader Nigel Farage has seized this narrative, backed by women on the far right who have made it their rallying cry, following in the footsteps of their French counterparts.
In France, 2024 marked a notable shift in support for the far right among women. Once a movement dominated by male voters, the far-right National Rally has seen a surge in female support. In 2019, 21% of women and 25% of men voted for the party. By 2024, 33% of women supported Marine Le Pen’s party – surpassing male support, which stood at 30%. This 12-point increase signalled a successful rebranding effort to appeal more directly to female voters. The method? Weaponising concerns around violence against women and girls, and using immigration as a bogeyman to instil fear.
“I never felt unsafe around the migrants. It felt like people were using my gender to justify their own opinions or actions.”
Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old leader of the National Rally, promised in a 2024 video to be “A Prime Minister who guarantees the rights and freedoms of every woman and girl in France.” He pledged stronger sentencing for domestic violence offenders, while vowing to deport “foreign delinquents.” Marine Le Pen, meanwhile, used her position as a woman to frame herself as a champion of women’s safety, while pushing an anti-immigration agenda. In an article for France24, Fabienne El-Khoury, a spokesperson for Osez le féminisme, said of this: "Marine Le Pen's programme is misogynistic. She has no concrete proposals for tackling violence against women, nor for addressing wage inequality. She only talks about women’s rights from a racist perspective, when she uses them to attack foreigners.”
Farage has become wise to this tactic. Last week, he unveiled “Operation Restoring Justice”, Reform's plan for the mass deportation of asylum seekers and migrants, including women and girls fleeing danger. He justified it by amplifying the idea that migrants are a danger to British women and girls.
This comes from a man who has never cared about women’s safety, and has directly acted against it: earlier this year, Reform voted against the Employment Rights Bill, which aimed to prevent workplace sexual harassment. He has defended Andrew Tate as an “important voice” for young men. Tate faces rape and trafficking charges (which he denies). Reform MP James McMurdock, convicted in 2006 of assaulting his ex-girlfriend, was described by Farage as a “good example to young tearaways.”
As the likes of Nigel Farage and Andrew Tate tussle for power, many of us are increasingly concerned about the rise of the right.
Others in his party are following suit. At a press conference on 11 August, Reform's first-ever female MP, Sarah Pochin, claimed migrants have a “warped view of their right to sexually assault women,” singling out men from “predominantly Muslim countries like Afghanistan.” She alleged they hold a “medieval view of women’s rights” which are “fundamentally alien to our own western values”. Her statements are baseless propaganda, dripping in Islamophobia and racism. In reality, the most dangerous place for a woman is her home, and the perpetrator is usually someone she knows. UN Women reported that in 2023, 85,000 women and girls were killed intentionally by men, with 60% murdered by someone close to them. Most rapes are carried out by current or former partners, and 90% of femicide killers are known to the victim.
This strategy echoes another hallmark of the far right: co-opting patriotism. Across the UK, Union Jacks and St George’s flags are being painted on shopfronts, mini-roundabouts, and zebra crossings. Groups like the Weoley Warriors, who describe themselves as “proud Englishmen,” are coordinating these displays. But flags in this context are not about pride. They are being used, like ‘women’s safety’, as tools of exclusion. The National Front did it in the 1970s, the BNP in the 2000s, and now it is happening again.
This playbook is old. But there is also a rich history of resistance, one which is alive and kicking right now.
Asking for a friend.
Charlotte Fischer from Love & Power, a UK feminist network focused on women’s safety, explained: “There is a long history of using women’s – and often specifically white women’s – safety as a justification to enact violence on racially minoritised men. When Britain colonised what is now part of Papua New Guinea, Britain created a law called the White Women’s Protection Ordinance that criminalised men who raped or tried to rape (white British) women and girls differently, depending on the man’s race.”
Fischer continued: “Let’s be clear: In Britain in 2025, most women will experience some form of gender based violence in their lifetime. But if we actually care about women, then we need to keep focus on what will actually help our safety. What we know about women’s safety is that by a long, long margin it’s the men around you (the men in your family, the men you are in romantic relationships with). Whoever you are, whatever your racial background is, that's who are most likely to be a threat to your safety, not folks who happen to be in the same town as you because they also want a home that is safe and has a better life.”
She also stressed that migrants’ safety is itself urgent: “They’re not in opposition. What Love & Power is doing is to work to keep ALL women – including migrant women – safe. That means being super clear on how we’re not divided and how we keep our focus on actual threats to women’s safety, not get rerouted to a decoy where folks are using a group of people who are vulnerable themselves to act as if they are a unique threat to women.”
“Women report boys blocking doorways and even barking at female staff, as well as watching increasingly violent pornographic material in class.”
On 19 August 2025, more than 100 women’s rights organisations – led by the End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW), Southall Black Sisters, Women for Refugee Women, and Hibiscus – issued an open letter to the Prime Minister. They condemned the far right’s use of violence against women and girls (VAWG) to stoke anti-migrant and racist agendas. “Attempts to weaponise VAWG through racist scapegoating of migrants not only distract from real solutions, but also deepen the marginalisation of Black, minoritised and migrant victim-survivors,” said Selma Taha of Southall Black Sisters.
Chiara Capraro, Gender Justice Director at Amnesty International, echoed this warning. Speaking to GLAMOUR, she said: “Taking on the cause of violence against women, but associating it with migrant men, is a tactic that we've seen the far right using throughout time. So this is nothing new. Gender based violence is overwhelmingly perpetrated by people that the victim knows…The trope of Stranger Danger is really deployed to foment racist attitudes and beliefs… It is about instrumentalising violence against women, instrumentalising victims’ experiences and trauma for political ends.”
She added: “This is dangerous, for racialised men, but also for women, because it means that if you say that violence against women is only an issue because men of colour perpetrated it, it doesn't put attention on what is going on in communities… On the one hand, they portray white women as in danger and threatened by men of colour. But at the same time, they also think about white women as becoming too emancipated. This idea that feminism has gone too far, and now it’s men who are suffering, justifies widespread misogyny in society.”
As Capraro concluded: “It’s really this kind of double-sided portrayal of women that serves both their racist aims, but also their aim to rebuild a patriarchal society where men are in control and women and children are valued less. It is not just a unilateral narrative. It’s a flexible narrative… The picture is much broader, and these actors are not the actors that are gonna solve violence against women or are even interested in that.”
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