The conclusion considers theoretical and practical changes needed to begin to extricate liberalism and liberal democracies from their patriarchal roots, strengthen the protection of women’s rights in liberal democracies, and bolster the ability of liberal democracies to fight against right-wing religio-populism. The changes suggested are in the tradition of the radical internal critique of liberalism offered by Susan Okin, whose radical liberal, or humanist, feminism aimed to provide theoretical underpinnings for a liberalism that will focus on both the private and the public spheres, recognize the gendered power differentials, oppression, and prejudices maintained and supported by patriarchal liberalism, and take active steps to change them. Most of the discussion will refer to the theoretical and practical changes needed to protect women’s rights in liberal democracies from the adverse effects of patriarchal religion, including its nationalist and populist iterations. The last part will discuss the connection between the suggested changes and the urgently needed overall struggle of liberal democracies against right-wing populism.

Calls to restrict women’s rights are a most effective rallying cry for right-wing populists and religious conservatives in their surprisingly successful attack on the foundations of liberal democracy. Populist leaders across the world use the aggrandizement of patriarchy and the opposition to women’s rights as the engine of a right-wing populist revolution. The success of the populist attack on women’s rights in liberal societies, together with decisions such as the American Dobbs decision, has confirmed feminist warnings regarding the flawed protection of women’s rights in liberal societies, which have hitherto been rejected by most liberals as unfounded and alarmist. The book claims that to understand the success of the religio-populist attack on women’s rights in liberal democracies, and its centrality to the success of right-wing populism, it is necessary to acknowledge and understand the patriarchal nature of liberalism and liberal societies. The introduction defines patriarchy and explains its connections to liberalism, religion, and populism, and the contemporary threat it poses to both women’s rights and liberal democracy. It then sets out the outline of the book.

This chapter argues that the flaws in liberal theory and practice that religious conservatives and right-wing populists use to attack women’s rights are also used to undermine liberal democracy. It claims that due to the embeddedness of patriarchy in liberal theory and practice, liberals have chosen to disregard the feminist critique of the liberal public–private distinction and of the refusal to intervene in the nonpolitical sphere. As a result, prejudices that liberals have allowed to flourish in the private sphere serve as the basis for a successful right-wing religio-populist attack on the liberal state itself. Using the example of the USA, the chapter discusses the capture of the American Supreme Court by the populist and religiously conservative Republican Party led by President Trump. It analyzes two major abortion decisions issued by the captured Supreme Court – Whole Women’s Health and Dobbs – and shows how these decisions thoroughly undermine the liberal rights regime, transfer the control over women’s bodies and their rights to Christian religious hands, and are part of a wholesale Christian nationalist attack on American liberal democracy.

A new era of universalism and constitutional systems sets in after the fall of the Berlin Wall. With a worldwide demise of most traditional communist systems, liberal democracies seem to be the last system standing: The End of history, as Francis Fukuyama dubbed it. A lot of nations change in their old constitutional system for a new one: a liberal democracy, set in stone by a constitution that lays down individual fundamental freedom protection, division of government power, popular sovereignty and democracy. The bulk of nations has or adopts a liberal democratic constitution by the end of the twentieth century (at least they do so on paper). Communist and theocratic (Islamic) constitutions still exist but they represent a minority part of the constitutions in existence. The first part of the twenty-first century shows slide backs in the form of illiberal democracies, democratic downfalls and an increase of autocratic systems. None state (or supra state) constitutions spring up.