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Revenge of the PatriarchsWhy Autocrats Fear Women
By Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks at Foreign Affairs March/April 2022
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2022-02-08/women-rights-revenge-patriarchs
"SNIP......
The pantheon of autocratic leaders includes a great many sexists, from Napoléon Bonaparte, who decriminalized the murder of unfaithful wives, to Benito Mussolini, who claimed that women never created anything. And while the twentieth century saw improvements in womens equality in most parts of the world, the twenty-first is demonstrating that misogyny and authoritarianism are not just common comorbidities but mutually reinforcing ills. Throughout the last century, womens movements won the right to vote for women; expanded womens access to reproductive health care, education, and economic opportunity; and began to enshrine gender equality in domestic and international lawvictories that corresponded with unprecedented waves of democratization in the postwar period. Yet in recent years, authoritarian leaders have launched a simultaneous assault on womens rights and democracy that threatens to roll back decades of progress on both fronts.
The patriarchal backlash has played out across the full spectrum of authoritarian regimes, from totalitarian dictatorships to party-led autocracies to illiberal democracies headed by aspiring strongmen. In China, Xi Jinping has crushed feminist movements, silenced women who have accused powerful men of sexual assault, and excluded women from the Politburos powerful Standing Committee. In Russia, Vladimir Putin is rolling back reproductive rights and promoting traditional gender roles that limit womens participation in public life. In North Korea, Kim Jong Un has spurred women to seek refuge abroad at roughly three times the rate of men, and in Egypt, President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi recently introduced a bill reasserting mens paternity rights, their right to practice polygamy, and their right to influence whom their female relatives marry. In Saudi Arabia, women still cannot marry or obtain health care without a mans approval. And in Afghanistan, the Talibans victory has erased 20 years of progress on womens access to education and representation in public office and the workforce.
The wave of patriarchal authoritarianism is also pushing some established democracies in an illiberal direction. Countries with authoritarian-leaning leaders, such as Brazil, Hungary, and Poland, have seen the rise of far-right movements that promote traditional gender roles as patriotic while railing against gender ideologya boogeyman term that Human Rights Watch describes as meaning nothing and everything. Even the United States has experienced a slowdown in progress toward gender equity and a rollback of reproductive rights, which had been improving since the 1970s. During his presidency, Donald Trump worked with antifeminist stalwarts, including Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, to halt the expansion of womens rights around the world. And despite the Biden administrations commitment to gender equity at the national level, Republican-controlled states are attempting to reverse the constitutional right to abortion, which is now more vulnerable than it has been in decades.
Not surprisingly, womens political and economic empowerment is now stalling or declining around the world. According to Georgetown Universitys Women, Peace, and Security Index, the implementation of gender equality laws has slowed in recent years, as have gains in womens educational attainment and representation in national parliaments. At the same time, intimate partner violence has increased, and Honduras, Mexico, and Turkey have seen significant increases in femicide. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these trends worldwide, forcing millions of women to leave the workforce and take on additional unpaid care, restricting their access to health care and education, and limiting their options for escaping abuse.
......SNIP"
58Sunliner
(4,381 posts)"In Russia, Vladimir Putin is rolling back reproductive rights and promoting traditional gender roles that limit womens participation in public life."
I_UndergroundPanther
(12,463 posts)Put the patriarchal shoe on mens feet and make them walk. Let them know what it feels like.
When they whine that it hurts them tighten the straps and make them walk uphill.
Seems patriarchy has no capacity for empathy. Time for it to go away.
Wish women everywhere could in solidarity tell the sociopath dominating,abusive men..
No. And back it up with millions of women making the men put on her shoes at gunpoint if they have to and make those petty tyrants walk.
iemanja
(53,031 posts)barbaraann
(9,151 posts)IMHO, a must-read.