Abstract:  Women now lead populist parties across Europe and beyond, an empirical reality that seemed implausible only a few decades ago. Yet populist leadership research remains predominantly male-centered and unevenly attentive to gender; studies of women populist leaders are growing but remain fragmented, while gender-and-leadership scholarship focuses largely on mainstream and gender-progressive contexts. This editorial reviews the state of research on women populist leaders along four axes—pathways and party context, the gendered demand side, the gendered performance of leadership, and agendas in office—and introduces the ten contributions to this thematic issue. It closes by identifying avenues for further research, among them ideological and geographical breadth, intersectionality, and the reception of gendered populist performance.

Keywords:  anti‐gender politics; comparative analysis; double bind; gender and populism; political leadership; populist radical right; women populist leaders

Published:   28 October 2026

Issue:   Vol 14 (2026): From the Far-Right to the Far-Left: Women Populist Leaders in Comparative Perspective