From Nazi Germany to Trump's America: why strongmen rely on women at home
Sourcehttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/sep/21/fascism-women-homemaker-trad-wife
subtitle-Fascist regimes pushed narratives of domestic bliss, yet relied on women’s unpaid labor. In the US today, ‘womanosphere’ influencers promote the same fantasies
snip-"Similarly, the Trump administration touts pronatalist rewards, such as a $1,000 government-funded investment account for new babies, and has discussed others, including a “National Medal of Motherhood” for women with six children. While vice-president JD Vance cried: “I want more babies in the United States of America” at an anti-abortion rally in early 2025, Republicans in Congress plotted eliminating federal tax credits for daycare and other supports that enable women’s workforce participation – an effort to control women’s social roles.
The administration’s policies suggest its goal is not only population growth but specifically more white births. By rolling back reproductive rights more drastically than at any point in the last 50 years, the Trump administration has set the stage for worsening maternal mortality – especially for Black women, who die in childbirth at nearly three-and-a-half times the rate of white women. It has also demonstrated hostility to people of color, tearing immigrant families apart, curtailing immigration and ordering an end to birthright citizenship.
Fascist pronatalist policy depends on the veneer of white, Christian “family values” – a strategy that echoes Scholtz-Klink’s work as Nazi Germany’s proto-influencer, promoting a sweet, soft life of “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” (“children, kitchen, church”). When interviewed, Scholtz-Klink insisted to Koonz that she and her female colleagues had nothing to do with concentration camps, genocide or political doctrine – that they barely even knew about those things. Instead, Scholtz-Klink made domestic and reproductive duty feel prestigious, rather than peremptory, helping “the Nazi party make ordinary women feel valued in a way that other women in more liberal parties didn’t”, Koonz says.
snip-"As authoritarian regimes rise, they often rely on a women’s movement to keep society stable and operational on a household level, framing regressive policies in more approachable and alluring terms. This is especially true for fascist regimes, which rely on mass participation to advance their extreme nationalist agendas. Today, that role is being taken up by the digital “womanosphere”, also called the femosphere."
Much more there
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