The term ‘tradwife’ has only been around since 2013, but it was even added to the Cambridge Dictionary in 2025. Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic, homemaking and lifestyle content have seen massive increases, particularly on mainstream platforms such as TikTok and YouTube Shorts, which make it easy to romanticise content. This talk will explore what a tradwife actually is, why we should talk about both femininity and masculinity to understand the movement and tradculture’s relationship to the womansphere/manosphere.
It will also unpack how the tradwife movement’s use of aesthetic content allows for the masking of alt-lite political views. To avoid universalising women’s experiences, this talk will adopt a Black feminist perspective to unpack the importance of race, class, gender and beyond in appreciating displays of normative femininity. We will finish by discussing some of the more dangerous ideas within the tradwife movement in terms of traditional gender roles for violence against women, such as submission, and vowing to obey your husband.
45 minutes will be devoted to Q&A; feel free to ask any questions.
Content warning: brief discussions of domestic abuse and violence against women.
