The Truth About the Past That ‘Tradwives’ Want to Revive
These women swear that old-school gender roles have made their lives and marriages better. The reality is much darker.
Tradwife is internet shorthand for “traditional wife”. While tradwives emerge across the political spectrum, a small subculture use their platforms to promote the dark ideas of the far right. They operate across social media platforms, prominent on X (formerly Twitter), TikTok and Instagram. For some, the lifestyle seems driven by social media, but for others, it’s a way of living.
The number of tradwives aligned with the far right may be small, but their popularity on social media platforms suggests their cohort is growing. And we know from our research that far-right tradwives are active in Australia, on places such as X and Tik Tok, Instagram and YouTube.
In 2020, UK-based extremism researcher Julia Ebner suggested 30,000 women identified as tradwives or Red Pill Women: women aligned with the far-right male online community Red Pill, who claim to be “awakened” to “male subjugation by feminism”.
Alena Petitt, a well-known author and lifestyle blogger, has become the British face of the “Tradwife” movement, closely associated with the hashtag #TradWife.
Far-right tradwives believe contemporary society is beset by decadence and consumerism, sexual depravity and promiscuity, and “unnatural” ways of living. This is all supposedly engineered to weaken the white race. Becoming a tradwife is one way far-right women push back against these supposed threats. Ebner believes “the search for love is what radicalises most Trad Wives”: they adopt the rhetoric of men’s rights activists who want “a return to traditional power roles and exaggerated notions of masculinity and femininity”.
stee Williams faced her TikTok followers and detractors head-on with full makeup, coiffed blonde waves, and a floral-printed puff sleeve peasant top cinched at the center with a tidy bow. She felt obligated to clarify a few things about what it really meant to be a “tradwife”—a portmanteau denoting “traditional wife”: “So the man goes outside the house, works, provides for the family. The woman stays home, and she’s the homemaker. She takes care of the home and the children if there are any.” But Williams’ definition moved beyond the idyllic character of June Cleaver or even the Victorian-era presumptions of separate spheres. “Tradwives also believe,” she insisted, “that they should submit to their husbands and serve their husbands and family.” Williams was quick to defend her position against potential critics, noting that she did not believe women were inferior to men, but that they had an equally important but different role.
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