You’ve seen the headlines: Genocide. Famine. War. Climate catastrophe. Inflation. The far right ascendant. Democracy in decline. For women in particular, things look particularly grim: Abortion rights have been overturned, with contraception next in the crosshairs; the workforce is hemorrhaging Black women; women still lag in political leadership; and social media influencers encourage young women to throw in the towel and put on an apron, tradwife style.
And it’s not just the United States. In even the most progressive countries, the status of women is in jeopardy. Sweden recently renounced its trademark feminist foreign policy. In Argentina, President Javier Milei came riding into power on a chainsaw, which he first used to cut down the country’s ministry for gender equality and, with it, 100 percent of the country’s support for combating domestic violence and sexual assault. And in the Netherlands, traditionally one the world’s most generous supporters of women’s rights, a new right-wing government pledged last year to eliminate billions of euros in development funding, including everything earmarked for gender equality programs.
And yet, in spite of all this, I have some unexpected good news: Globally, the tide is turning in women’s favor.
In a recent report, my colleagues and I at the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative completed a comprehensive global review of policy trends related to the status of women in more than 20 countries around the world. To be sure, we found that the rightward swing of elections has impacted the policy landscape in even the most progressive countries. However, we also found that in spite of these regressions, the tide seems to be turning, with activists partnering with women in leadership to reclaim their rights and imagine bold new standards for equality and inclusion.
In Sweden, the government’s rejection of its feminist foreign policy in 2022 was met with a nationwide outcry. People from all over the country came together—from mayors to former ministers—to demand its reinstatement. And now, ahead of next year’s election, the opposition parties have pledged to reinstate the feminist foreign policy if returned to power—which they are currently projected to do. In the Netherlands, activists and parliamentarians worked to successfully reinstate 40 million euros in gender equality funding that had been cut.
In Argentina, activists and former government officials are demonstrating in the streets to demand the reinstatement of women’s rights and supportive programs. They are pursing innovative political strategies, such as petitioning for protections in regional bodies. And they recently won a case at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which declared a universal right to giving and receiving care as well as exercising self-care.
In some cases, setbacks in one country are prompting progress in others. After witnessing the U.S. Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade, the French government adopted a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a national right to abortion. And after Sweden reversed its feminist foreign policy, the Spanish parliament voted to enshrine Spain’s version in its development cooperation law.
Meanwhile, countries such as Mexico, Chile, Spain, Liberia, and Mongolia are taking concrete steps to expand women’s leadership, and it’s paying off.
Mexico recently elected the first woman to serve as head of state in North America and has also achieved gender parity in its legislature. To accelerate progress in the executive branch, the Mexican Foreign Ministry will now consider women candidates at a 2-to-1 ratio in a new affirmative action policy.
Spain and Chile have reached gender parity in their cabinets. Liberia has launched a Gender Equality and Social Inclusion Policy with a target of 50 percent women’s representation in electoral processes. And last year, Mongolia broke records for the Asia and Pacific region, with 25.4 percent of the country’s parliament now made up of women, and it has implemented a gender quota with a goal of 40 percent by 2028.
I take two lessons from this. First, although we often receive defeat as final and complete, it rarely is. As the pendulum swings in Sweden, Argentina, and the Netherlands show, yesterday’s defeat seeds today’s active resistance and tomorrow’s victory on another front. Gender equality policy is a site of contest, conquest, and change, and any moment represents not a conclusion but an isolated moment on a spectrum of time that moves both forward and backward. Progressive leaders and advocates are chipping away at these defeats and slowly but deliberately reclaiming lost ground.
The second lesson is more concerning. I find that the women’s rights movement is doing a bad job of telling the story of (and learning from) our victories. Because our wins are often less far-reaching or sensational than some of the high-profile setbacks, they are less likely to receive media coverage. This is a tragedy, because it means our narrative of social change is incomplete: We believe defeat to be final, when in fact the resistance is alive and well and effective. It’s our duty to tell those stories and to learn from them, too.
That’s why the Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative is launching a global repository of the world’s progressive victories for women’s rights. We’ve gathered groundbreaking policies on everything from abortion to feminist foreign policy, including archived texts that conservative governments have tried to disappear. We’ve crowdsourced policy briefs and advocacy resources and analyses of progressive victories in dozens of countries and amassed more than 600 resources in 16 languages. And now, our repository is open for policymakers, advocates, academics, and individuals from all over the world to continue to upload their resources and help us tell the successful story of the global feminist movement.
On Oct. 22, I will join more than 60 world leaders for a summit in Frace aimed at learning from global women’s rights victories and creating a new coalition of countries committed to defending and extending them. For the first time, more than a dozen foreign ministers and activists from nearly 100 countries will declare their commitment to fighting back against countries such as the United States and Russia that are trying to unravel the established consensus on gender equality. It’s a wonderfully global group. There are new champions stepping forward, such as the United Kingdom and Morocco, alongside longtime champions including Spain and South Africa.
This is a major milestone for women’s rights at a time when good news is desperately needed. It probably won’t make the headlines that it deserves. But it’s important proof that the movement for women’s rights didn’t die last year, or the year before that, or the year before that. It’s all around us, in a million tiny victories and a billion voices raised in dissent.
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