In this op-ed, Angie Jaime explores the ways women are still subjugated and oppressed this International Women's Day.
The situation is becoming more dire by the minute: In countries around the world, anti-feminist rhetoric and policies are the gasoline on the fire reducing women’s rights to ash and the proof is evident everywhere we look. According to U.N. Women, gender disparities are on the rise; it may take nearly three centuries (286 years) to close the global gender gaps in legal protections for women and girls.
In our own backyard, in a historic ruling heard ‘round the world, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, declaring that the constitutional right to abortion, upheld for nearly a half century, would no longer exist. And in what feels like an everyday occurrence, reproductive rights are battled in the courts, with lives hanging in the balance.
The National Center for Transgender Equality’s most recent Transgender Remembrance Report cites that Black trans women make up 3.78% of the U.S. trans population, yet they make up almost 25% of the reported deaths in the U.S., with 40.4% of the losses from violent crimes. According to a 2016 study from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), more than four in five Native American women (84.3%) have experienced violence in their lifetime and over half have experienced sexual violence. More than 1.5 million American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime, per the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
China’s government has moved to further target feminists (and LGBTQ organizers) in particular as it flexes social control, imposing strict censorship policies, both online and in the real world. These methods have successfully quieted campaigns for labor rights as well as overt activism for women’s rights. In another corner of the world, beyond limiting women from most areas of public life and preventing girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade after taking power in 2021, the Taliban are restricting Afghan women’s access to work, travel and health care if they are unmarried or don’t have a male guardian, according to a U.N. report published in January. These are just a few of the over 50 decrees restricting women’s lives, and just a few of the many atrocities women around the globe face.
There are glimmers of hope to be sure, but they are hard-won. Mexico’s Supreme Court moved to decriminalize abortions at the federal level in 2023. In 2022, Colombia, a highly conservative country, did the same, though now the ruling is now in question. And just as recently as this week, France approved a bill to preserve the right to an abortion in the country's constitution.
It’s worth noting that dedicated feminist media has all but disappeared from the internet. The Feminist Institute describes the bleak landscape, “in recent years, we’ve seen the shuttering of Bitch Media, Feministing, The Hairpin, Feminist Frequency, Lenny Letter, and Rookie, among other feminist digital media sites. In addition, feminist verticals from Vice and Slate were rolled into their main sites, leaving little trace of their original formats and, in some cases, causing link rot as an unintended consequence of strategy shifts.” Very few outlets remain today that specifically exist within a feminist context, further widening the generational knowledge gap as outlets shutter and digital archives disappear.
But despite these notable gaps in equality for women, many people seem to think gender equality is a fight already won. In a recent study carried out in 31 countries by Ipsos together with the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London for International Women’s Day, “Over half of Gen Z and Millennials think when it comes to giving women equal rights with men, things have gone far enough in my country (57% Gen Z, 60%, Millennials) compared with two in five Baby Boomers (43%).”
The legacy of the labor movements at the turn of the 20th century, which gave way to the official recognition of International Women's Day by the United Nations in 1977 is still fraught in the present moment. And here in the U.S., the true impact of the 2017 historic Women’s March is likewise murky, (yes it led to a record setting number of women elected to Congress, yet white feminism plagued its formation and history). Perhaps it’s with good reason, this year’s International Women’s Day celebrations feel dimmed by the precarious nature of women’s rights.
