Manufacturing egalitarian injustice: A discursive analysis of the rhetorical strategies used in fathers’ rights websites in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

The fathers’ rights movement is a worldwide phenomenon that takes a particular form in our geopolitical region. Responding initially to an apparent judicial preference for mothers to have custody of children, the movement grew alongside, and in resistance to, the women’s movement. In this paper, we analyse how texts of fathers’ rights discourse strategically appropriate egalitarianism in the context of gendered struggles over rights within the nuclear family. Texts from four fathers’ rights websites are engaged to locate, construct and critique the discursive power of the movement in Aotearoa/New Zealand. We discuss examples of strategies that appropriate egalitarianism, engage quantifying logic, and demonise women and argue how the fathers’ rights sites exemplify resistance to the impact of the women’s movement on Family Court and criminal justice interventions into violence against women at home.