Happy International Women's Day?

Happy International Women’s Day?
3/8/2023 by Jill Filipovic


**********It’ll only take women three more centuries to gain equality, because conservatives in the U.S., Iran and Afghanistan and elsewhere don’t want equality at all.**********



Thousands of protesters fill Trafalgar Square on Oct. 1, 2022 in London, England. The protests were sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, 22. (Martin Pope / Getty Images)

This story originally appeared on Jill.substack.com, a newsletter from journalist, lawyer and author Jill Filipovic.

Well this isn’t great: U.N. Secretary General Anthony Gutierrez said this week that, thanks to significant backsliding, U.N. Women now estimates that if we stay on our current trajectory, women around the world won’t reach full equality for another 300 years. And that’s if we stay on our current trajectory. A whole lot of people around the world—from Iran’s theocratic regime, to the Taliban in Afghanistan, to the Republican Party in the United States—want to prevent gender equality from ever becoming a reality. And their power is growing.

The last century has largely been a good one for women’s progress. But with every large step forward, we’ve seen backlash, and this is a global trend. Right-wing nationalist movements—from those led by Mussolini and Hitler and Franco, to the more modern incarnations of those led by Trump and Orban and Erdogan—have inevitably arisen in reaction to periods of progress. They always have this necessary component: an embrace of traditional gender roles—that is, of men in charge of a family’s financial, political and social life, and women at home, financially dependent on a male partner, having and raising children. Right now, we’re in another backlash period. And it’s not just in the U.S. While women’s rights are expanding in many nations that are embracing democracy, and abortion rights have been expanding worldwide, we’ve seen a backsliding in tandem with the rise of new authoritarians. With authoritarianism typically comes patriarchy and anti-feminism. With democracy and an embrace of enlightenment ideals generally comes progress for women.

Ask yourself: What’s happening in my country?

Around the world, the COVID pandemic and related shutdowns hit women and girls hard. Girls who left school often didn’t return because of pregnancy, early marriage or family duties. For women, unpaid work went up, paid work went down, and domestic violence became more common. In Russia, Vladimir Putin has pushed for a return to orthodoxy and traditionalism, and the Duma—which does his bidding—complied by decriminalizing domestic violence that doesn’t put a woman in the hospital. The Russian Orthodox Church supported this measure; domestic violence, Russian religious conservatives say, is a private matter. In Poland, the far-right party has captured the country’s constitutional court; as a result, Polish abortion laws have become the strictest in the European Union.


Protestors demonstrate against Poland’s strict abortion policy in front of the ruling party’s office in Krakow, on Nov. 28, 2022—the 104th anniversary of Polish women’s suffrage. Polish abortion laws have become the strictest in the European Union. (Beata Zawrzel / NurPhoto via Getty Images)

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Every inch women have gained has been hard-won.

In the U.S., of course, many of the same conservatives who claim to care about the well-being of Afghan women and then oppose asylum procedures that would allow them to come live in safety are enthusiastically fighting against women’s rights in the U.S.
Abortion is now criminalized or soon-to-be-criminalized in most Republican-led states. Outlawing abortion has been a human rights disaster: Women have gone septic, lost their uteruses, lost their fertility, almost died. It’s entirely possible that some women have died because they couldn’t get the abortions they needed, and we simply don’t know about it. While they claim to care about the women they are forcing to give birth, not one single “pro-life” state that has criminalized abortion since Dobbs was decided last summer has also expanded paid parental leave, or created any sort of universal childcare system, or even expanded welfare benefits or food stamps or housing options for struggling moms and their hungry kids. They have done nothing to decrease their infant and maternal mortality rates, which tend to be higher in abortion-hostile states than in pro-choice ones. (Have you ever wondered why the countries that are the best for children are also the most feminist, while a great many “pro-life” nations and American states are dismal places to be a woman, baby or child? It’s not a coincidence.)
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So yes, a lot is terrible. But no, despair is not an option—unless you want to lose. And I refuse to do that. (RIGHT THERE WITH YOU, MY SISTER!!!!!!!)


https://msmagazine.com/2023/03/08/womens-rights-abortion-iran-aghanistan-usa/