Demonstrators carry signs during The People’s March ahead of the 60th presidential inauguration in Washington, DC, US, January 18, 2025.© 2025 Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images
What went right in terms of women’s rights last year?
There are countries that lifted restrictions on women’s rights and have moved—albeit slowly—towards gender equality. You have Poland, where the new government that came to power in December 2023 stopped the previous administration’s trend of creating obstacles to abortion access. The country also expanded its rape law to recognize that sex without consent is rape. Previously, women and girls had to prove they resisted or fought their rapist.
In Mexico, states have been progressively decriminalizing abortion both through the courts and legislature, and last year its largest state, the State of Mexico, followed suit. This is good for millions of women and girls. Mexico also passed a constitutional amendment to guarantee equal payment and gender parity in federal and state government positions.
Elsewhere in Latin America, Chile has a new comprehensive law against gender-based violence. Importantly, the law includes “non-sexist education” as a component in combatting sexual violence. To address the root causes of sexual violence, we have to educate children without using gender stereotypes and address social and cultural practices that enforce the idea that one gender is superior to another. Sexual and gender-based violence is still normalized in many spaces, and it’s through non-sexist education that young people can learn what consent means and what healthy sexual relationships look like.
What caused women’s rights to backslide over the past year?
The scale of conflict around the world is troubling, and the huge incidence of sexual violence in conflict makes it even more of a tragedy. Despite this being a well-known reality, countries are still not providing the health services that women and girls need during conflict, nor are countries combatting the stigma and shame around sexual violence, making it harder for survivors to seek services and justice.
You can see these shortfalls in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, where the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group’s advance this year has triggered a catastrophic humanitarian crisis. Sexual violence is being committed by all parties to the conflict, but survivors have barely any support and services. You can also see it in Haiti where criminal groups control parts of the country. In the last months these groups have intensified attacks against civilians, including horrific acts of sexual violence against women and girls. While we hope there will be conditions for survivors to seek justice, their immediate needs must be urgently addressed.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban has doubled down on their attack against women and girls. They’ve gone so far as to even order windows be blocked if women could be seen from the outside. The Taliban has segregated women and girls at a level without precedent in modern history. But finally, although slow, the world is reacting. The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor requested the court issue arrest warrants against two Taliban leaders for the crime against humanity of gender persecution. Other countries are pressing Afghanistan to cease its violations of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Afghan women are leading a campaign to create gender apartheid as a crime against humanity, and several countries are supporting this call.
In the United States we are seeing rollbacks to women’s rights. The first Trump presidency was bad for reproductive rights, and one month in, Donald Trump’s second term is even more troubling for women. Not only are there large swaths of the country where women and girls don’t have access to abortion care, but Trump has also signaled his disregard for women’s safety by pardoning people convicted of physically blocking or threatening violence against patients at reproductive health clinics.
Trump’s views on what he calls “gender ideology,” a term long used by opponents of women’s and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, is based on a denial of the right to autonomy. The new administration has also sought to redefine sex as strictly male or female and fixed at birth, jeopardizing access to education, healthcare, and other federally funded services for transgender women and girls.
Additionally, the Trump administration’s attacks against diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] for women in the workplace will be particularly harmful for Black, Latina, and Indigenous women. The administration is also trying to bring its ideological crusade against DEI to the United Nations and its agencies, demanding that they follow the Trump administration’s example. But giving into these demands would undermine the rights of women, girls, and LGBT people around the world.
That said, we have to be optimistic about the power of people’s voices. In 2024, when people in US states got measuresto protect women’s abortion rights on election ballots, most were successful.
What do you think the biggest issues facing women’s rights will be in 2025?
One continues to be women’s participation in decision making, including in peace and security processes. How do we get out of conflict? How do we produce better long-term solutions for peace? Women’s participation is key.
Without diverse perspectives on how a country is rebuilt, you miss some of the most complex problems because the people making decisions don’t experience them. So, if only men are in the room, the experience of half of the population may be ignored. Which means they will also miss solutions to problems suffered primarily by those left out.
In Syria, the fall of the Assad government creates an opportunity to listen to women on how Syrian society should be rebuilt. Syrian women have been very active in opposing the Assad regime’s repression and politically organized. Syria’s new authorities and the world leaders engaging with them should ensure women fully participate in all discussions on justice, accountability, and the rebuilding of Syria. The same obligation applies in Bangladesh, where an interim government charts a path forward following the ousting of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s repressive government last August. Women in Bangladesh must also be full participants in decision making.
Many women’s rights issues don’t make mainstream news. Is there anything you’re paying attention to in those spaces?
The violence that women and girls experience during pregnancy and childbirth has been historically invisible and normalized. It now has a name: obstetric violence. This type of violence includes forced sterilization and not having a say in whether you have an episiotomy [cutting the vaginal opening] while giving birth. It happens when women in childbirth are denied anesthesia, while other patients are not, or when women are giving birth in parking lots or hospital hallways because hospital beds are prioritized for other patients.
This type of violence is suffered by millions of women and girls around the world, yet it isn’t seen as a problem. It happens consistently because health care policies often deprioritize women and girls. The problem is invisible because there is often no data gathered by governments, no training for medical personnel around this issue, and no budgets allocated to prevent obstetric violence.
We are working with local organizations in Africa and Latin America to see how we can move forward on this issue. Some countries are developing guidelines and laws against obstetric violence, and there are decisions by human rights courts and UN bodies against countries for their responsibility in obstetric violence.
We are also looking at care and support work. There is finally an understanding that women are mostly in charge of caring for children and supporting older people or for people who need support to carry out daily activities. Women and girls are also in charge of domestic work, both poorly paid and unpaid. This type of labor acts as an economic subsidy for countries. It’s unpaid or low-paid work that someone has to do so that someone else can provide for the country’s economy. It is undervalued and economically unrecognized. This has a particular impact on women and girls from already marginalized communities, including women with disabilities. They not only sometimes require support to carry out daily activities but are also providers of support and care for others. Because of this, they suffer double discrimination.
In recent years, many western countries have elected governments that could be damaging to women’s rights at home and abroad. What’s your advice for women living in those spaces, as well as for women living where women’s rights were never on the agenda?
It is evident that in countries where political participation is eroded, women’s rights are eroded too. The connection between the rise of authoritarianism and the shrinking space for women’s rights is very clear.
After Roe vs. Wade fell in the United States, women began organizing on a state-by-state basis to protect their rights. It became about local politics. In many parts of the world, including the United States, grassroots movements and city-specific organizations are likely to have more female participation. I grew up in Chile during a military dictatorship, and it was women who organized the neighborhood spaces of resistance through “common pots” where people would cook together to fight hunger while also forming political spaces.
Our concept of politics is too narrow. Yes, things look bad higher up the political ladder from the perspective of women’s participation. In the United States, less than 30 percent of the members of congress are women. But not at the grassroots level. Women’s participation in local communities is the basis for making changes at national and international levels, too.
Also, it’s important to remember that fighting for women’s rights means you’re fighting authoritarianism. It’s often authoritarian governments, or those backsliding into authoritarianism, that take women’s rights away. But women’s access to health care and living a life free from violence is good for everyone. And when you take away women’s freedom of expression and association, it brings down whole communities, no matter people’s gender. The fact that women’s rights are human rights is not just a slogan, it’s a lived reality.
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출처: Human Rights Watch