How anti-migrant groups are hijacking women’s rights to promote their agenda

Experts and women’s rights groups warn sexual violence and child safety narratives are being ‘weaponised to promote anti-migrant agendas’

Anti-immigration protesters in Britain are increasingly seizing on women’s issues in an “opportunistic” bid to make their fringe views more palatable to the general public, experts have warned.

Chants of “protect our girls” and “save our kids” now feature prominently at anti-migration marches and demonstrations, leading women’s rights groups to raise concerns over “the weaponisation” of violence against women and girls to “promote anti-migrant agendas”.

With the rise of this rhetoric has come the birth of two distinct women-led and-oriented factions within the movement over the past year – the Pink Ladies and the Women’s Safety Initiative (WSI).

These groups reject they are part of the far-right, with signs bearing slogans such as “I’m not far right, I’m worried about my kids” and “protecting women and children isn't far right” a common sight at demonstrations.

However, experts say that these groups – whether knowingly or unknowingly – are adopting the same language now being deployed by the far-right in a bid to add a “veneer of respectability” to its ideology.

This year has seen a notable surge in the use of language focused on women (Getty)

Experts say these narratives appeal specifically to women “opportunistically”, exploiting genuine fears around real issues, and make the far-right appear more “palatable”. Both mean the far-right can appeal to a broader audience and increase the acceptability of their ideas within the mainstream.

Last year marked a key development within the far-right, where women are increasingly organising more formally within the movement and becoming more visible and vocal on a street level, which are all serving as effective promotion and recruitment tools, expert say.

Andrea Simon, director of the End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW), which was one of more than 100 women’s rights organisations that wrote to prime minister Keir Starmer in August to raise these concerns, told The Independent: “These narratives are promoted by those who exploit genuine public concerns about sexual violence to intentionally fuel racism in our communities.

“We know that violence against women and girls is perpetrated by men of all backgrounds, and that the vast majority of rapes are perpetrated by someone known to the victim.

“In part due to its cynical co-option of violence against women and girls, we are increasingly seeing women, particularly white women, publicly involved in these groups. As society grapples with serious, longstanding failures to address male violence against women and girls, years of austerity and widening inequalities, these groups are opportunistically drawing in new supporters en masse.”

A researcher at Hope not Hate, an anti-racist and anti-fascist organisation, said rhetoric around a “foreign sexual threat” to women and girls has existed within the far-right for years, but has dominated this summer’s protests.

This narrative has been “supercharged” by issues such as grooming gangs, which critics say far-right figure Tommy Robinson uses to push his anti-migrant agenda, as well as cases of asylum seekers being arrested for sexual crimes, according to a spokesperson for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).

Rallies outside asylum hotels this summer broke out following the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl by asylum seeker Hadush Kebatu, who was living at the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex, where the first demonstration happened.

The Bell Hotel attracted protests in the summer over the housing of asylum seekers (PA)

The “paedophilic threat”, which is the false claim that all asylum seekers are a threat to children, also engaged many women in their roles as mothers and grandmothers in this summer’s protests, the Hope not Hate researcher said, with chants of “stop the boats” heard before “protect our kids” minutes later.

Both narratives serve to “escalate anti-migration into a public safety issue”, which is an argument that is harder to counter, the researcher said. “It also makes the far-right appear more publicly palatable,” they added: “[The men are] no longer presenting themselves as thuggish far-right members but also protectors of the community.”

Lois Shearing, author of Pink Pilled, an investigation into how women are recruited by the far-right online, said this can provide the far-right with a powerful “veneer of respectability”.

The ISD spokesperson warned: “The safety of women and girls is a key narrative being used by the far-right, which is significantly easier to promote than more extreme anti-migrant hate. As such, there is a danger that women and girls are used cynically as a wedge to promote these beliefs.

“This is often couched in wider anti-migrant discourse around crime and descriptions of mass migration as an ‘invasion’.

“The rhetoric is used to argue that as migrants (typically with the subtext of migrants from non-white or Muslim countries) as a whole are a threat to (white) women and girls, the safest action is mass deportations.”

The women-focused factions that have sprung up this year are portrayed in this “cleaner-looking” way, and they deny being far-right, said the Hope not Hate researcher, with family-oriented events, “girl power” messaging, songs and pink as the colour of choice. That all serves to appear in contrast to the violence of the far-right riots fuelled by the Southport stabbings last year, which led to mass arrests for violence, they said.

The Pink Ladies began as a trend to wear pink at marches, before figures such as Epping Forest Reform UK vice-chair Orla Minihane started organising the group during the Epping protests, according to the researcher.

The group held one of their larger stand-alone demonstrations in Chelmsford last month, a “pink protest”, with right-wing commentator Mike Graham telling the crowd: “I am saying [asylum seekers] are all f***ing rapists. Because it’s the only language they understand. We don’t want them here.”

The WSI, established earlier this year by Jess Gill, is smaller, with a more serious tone that could be described as politically focused. But the group uses similar rhetoric, holding up signs reading “mass immigration equals mass risk for women” or “secure borders means safer for women”.

Police clashed with far-right protesters during riots across the UK last summer (Getty)

The Pink Ladies and WSI are new in that they are more formal and individualised, and also in their high levels of organisation and mainstream street mobilisation, according to the Hope not Hate researcher, who warned that “with mobilisation comes recruitment”. Shearing agreed, adding that “a broader contingency of women” is being appealed to.

Although there is no data to confirm if women are now making up higher proportions of the far-right, Shearing said that because numbers are growing within the movement overall, this means there are increasingly more women involved.

They warned that among the most concerning developments they have noticed in 2025 is the creeping normalisation of extremist anti-immigrant beliefs.

“The momentum we’ve seen around hotels and marches will die down,” they said. “But I worry about how long it’s going to take us to undo how acceptable these views have become in mainstream politics.”

A spokesperson for the WSI said: “These so-called experts should be less concerned about WSI standing up for women and representing the public and more concerned about the brutal murders of Emily Jones and Rhiannon Skye White at the hands of migrants, [or] the race-based grooming of... British girls by predominantly Pakistani men.”

They added: “We are representing the stories of the thousands of women and girls across the country who have joined and spoke to WSI.”

The Independent has contacted the Pink Ladies for comment.