Nikolina Sindjelic never imagined that her face would become synonymous not only with Serbia’s protest movement but also with the horrors of image-based sexual abuse.
As a university student studying journalism in Belgrade, Sindjelic, now 22, had from the beginning been involved in activism around the pro-democracy demonstrations taking place across her country for almost a year.
While protesting in central Belgrade in mid-August, she was detained by members of a special police unit. She later accused the police of holding her for several hours in a garage where, she said, she was physically assaulted and threatened by the head of the unit with rape and sodomy.
The country’s interior minister stated her allegations were false. Soon after, intimate photographs of Ms. Sindjelic, taken when she was a minor, appeared on social media and pro-government media outlets.
(The New York Times reached out several times for a response from the government on Ms. Sindjelic’s allegations but did not receive a reply.)
Ms. Sindjelic is not an anomaly in Serbia, pro-democracy activists said. Women, who have played a central role in the protests against a government they accuse of corruption, have been targeted for police violence and image-based sexual abuse to try to silence them. In Serbia, women have pushed back with such vigor that female students in September were given the Conquering Freedom Award by the Maja Maršićević Tasić Foundation, a Serbian organization named in memory of a journalist and politician that promotes human rights, democracy and tolerance.)
“You are seeing a backslide in democracy in Serbia, you are seeing all the signs,” Ms. Sindjelic said in a video interview in English and Serbian, noting that police and politicians are “exploiting vulnerabilities they see in the ‘weaker sex’ and they’re much harsher with females.”
Yet the tactic is not unique to Serbia, democracy experts and academics said. According to political scientists, gender-based violence is one of many tactics deployed by eroding democracies to delegitimize women and limit their rights, to assert control.
Studies have shown there is a strong correlation between the status of women in a country and the health of its democracy, with the empowerment of women viewed as a fundamental cornerstone in nations seeking democratic resilience. Conversely, women are disproportionately affected when a democracy starts to backslide.
“Democracy helps advance gender equality, and more gender equality, in turn, helps reinforce democracy, so it’s kind of a mutually reinforcing relationship,” said Saskia Brechenmacher, senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who holds a doctorate in political science and government, in a video call. “So given that, you can imagine that a trend of democratic erosion in the long term is going to have a negative effect, because it’s breaking down that mutually reinforcing relationship.”
Democracy in crisis
At the Athens Democracy Forum earlier this month, one panel, “Bending the Arc of Democracy,” presented in partnership with the Charles F. Kettering Foundation and moderated by Ivan Vejvoda, a Serbian political scientist and Kettering Fellow, examined threats facing democracy, including the effect of democratic backsliding on women and girls.
“We are sitting at a moment of democracy crisis worldwide,” Sharon L. Davies, the president and chief executive of the Kettering Foundation, said during the panel.
Given that crisis — and the overall increase in nations retreating from democracy over the last two decades — many fear that more women are living with decreasing rights. That often results in their having to fight harder for access to reproductive health care, representation in political structures and civic engagement, protections from gender-based violence, and socioeconomic participation.
“Rolling back gender rights is both a symptom and a tool of democratic decline,” said Lisa Witter, the co-founder and chief executive of the Better Politics Foundation and a speaker on another panel at the Athens Democracy Forum, in a video call before the conference. “Diversity is good for democracy. You need people sitting around the table with diverse points of view in order to deliver on democracy.”
An increasing international hostility to gender equality has followed the advancements of women’s rights across the globe over the last 50 years. In the last decades of the 20th century, several international conferences and treaties focused on women’s rights, including the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1979 and the World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.
Conny Roggeband, an associate professor in political science at the University of Amsterdam and co-author of a U.N. Women paper, “Democratic Backsliding and the Backlash Against Women’s Rights,” said this focus was viewed as positive overall. However, many conservative organizations and politicians were not happy with the global movement for female empowerment.
“Very early on they already started to make all these kinds of transnational connections,” she said in a video interview, “as well as strategically thinking about how to block further progress and how to also even reverse some of the progress.”
With the rise of right-leaning populist leaders across the globe in democracies like Hungary, Italy, Argentina and India, momentum has grown.
“It’s predicated on the fact that we are in times of uncertainty and volatility,” Mr. Vejvoda said in a video interview ahead of the forum panel, which he said has people “seeking for some flag, identity politics.”
But many right-wing leaders also feel that neoliberalism has gone too far, especially in what is cited as the breakdown of families, loose immigration policies and the expansion of rights for women and L.G.B.T.Q. people.
The war on ‘woke’
The right has also focused on “woke” politics and diversity, equity and inclusion (D.E.I.) policies. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth explicitly pointed to it in his Sept. 30 speech to military brass, saying the armed forces had been sullied by “woke” military and political leaders.
Earlier in September, the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, a group founded in 1951 to serve female service members, was shuttered. (The Pentagon cited its “divisive feminist agenda.”) The committee had focused on prevention of sexual assault and harassment, gender equality and integration, and women’s well-being and health.
Political parties and leaders also mine voters’ fears about economic, social and political conditions.
Well documented has been the reaction of men who had benefited from a traditional male hierarchy but now felt a relative status loss, fueling resentment. That has encouraged the rise of trends like the incel phenomena of men who view themselves as involuntarily celibate and blame women for globally falling birthrates. Dr. Brechenmacher from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace highlighted an example in South Korea, where research found that young men who were cynical about their job prospects were less inclined to be supportive of gender-equality policies.
Dr. Brechenmacher said that there was growing research suggesting that patriarchy and authoritarianism were not just related phenomena but operated as “mutually reinforcing” political strategies. Far-right populist governments and political parties “have made gender very central to their political project,” she said, adding that, “It’s no longer just a civil society project, it’s suddenly also a real political project that’s being implemented by governments, including in the United States.”
Asked about these trends and Trump Administration policies toward women, Anna Kelly, the White House deputy press secretary, said in a brief statement to The New York Times, “President Trump has long called attention to policies that harm women and families.” The statement went on to cite control of “unfettered migration” as the administration’s attempt to protect women, as loose borders risk “crushing great nations around the world.”
“The President warned these countries at the United Nations General Assembly that they must reverse course” on immigration, “or risk horrific consequences,” the statement concluded.
‘Early warning signs’
Democracy experts cite attacks on reproductive health care as an early red flag that can indicate a democracy is backsliding. That has been seen across the globe in countries including the United States, Poland and Honduras, where access to abortion care has been curtailed.
“It’s very difficult for people in the United States to understand that the backsliding in our rights in Roe v. Wade are actually early warning signs and precursors to what we are experiencing today,” said Caroline Hubbard, the former senior gender adviser for the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Governance at U.S.A.I.D.
Polish women led movements in both 2016 and 2020 when their then-conservative government tried to outlaw abortion. Women were successful in blocking a total ban in 2016, but four years later the government pressed ahead with very restrictive laws that the current government is working to at least partially dismantle.
Collective mobilization that includes demonstrations, grass-roots advocacy and participation in politics and civic organizations is a barometer for tracking backsliding democracies. A report last year from the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford tracked increasing violence against women who were working in politics, including threats of rape and death.
According to a 2016 study by the Inter-Parliamentary Union, 82 percent of female parliament members around the world had experienced sexist remarks, threats or harassment.
That is not exactly a ringing endorsement for women to enter politics. But strong civic organizations across the globe continue to persevere. Flávia Pellegrino, the executive director of a Brazil-based civil-society coalition Pacto pela Democracia, who also took part in the panel in Athens on democratic backsliding, said in an email interview that organizations needed to find ways to effect change despite what can seem like insurmountable obstacles.
She said civic organizations in her country remained relevant because of the fact they had been able to build networks and act together in broader coalitions.
“In a context where authoritarian actors often try to shrink civic space, these organizations increase their impact by situating gender issues inside a larger democratic framework, linking women’s rights to themes like electoral integrity, transparency or freedom of expression,” she said.
“This makes it harder to marginalize their agenda as ‘special interest’ and places them at the core of democratic defense.”
The post As Democratic Institutions Erode, Women See a Loss of Rights appeared first on New York Times.
