From Afghanistan to Poland, from the USA to Italy, from South Korea to Hungary. All over the world, women’s rights are under threat and in many ways regressing. This is explained in a French report by the feminist association Equipop and the Jean Jaurès Foundation, which reminds us of the famous photo of the Women’s March on Washington in 2017, in which an elderly woman holds a banner with the words “I can’t believe I still have to protest this fucking shit ! It cannot be denied that progress has been made over the years, especially in some regions of the world, but we can never really take anything for granted.
“Not a single region is spared,” explained AFP expansion Lucy Daniel, spokesperson for Equipop, speaks of the onslaught of “very different groups uniting against women’s rights.” “Movements against human rights,” the report says, “represent a very heterogeneous group, bringing together state and non-state actors of political, economic and religious origin, which can be classified under various names: conservative, anti-feminists, anti-feminists, fundamentalists.” It’s a structured offensive, and at the crossroads are various core rights that are related to each other, such as the right of women to decide what happens to their bodies (see anti-abortion trends in the US and Poland), LGBTQIA+ rights, but also, more generally , the foundations of freedom and democracy (Afghanistan and Iran are currently perhaps the most prominent examples). “Anti-right movements deny the rights of all who do not fit the heteronormative and cisgender model”explained in the report. They talk about “gender theory”, having no idea about gender and queer studies, claiming that feminism wants to deny biological sex and attacking the trans community.
“While it is difficult to pinpoint the amount of funding anti-rights movements receive as they are often disguised and opaque, these movements have potentially raised billions of euros between 2009 and 2018,” the report says. According to a 2020 OpenDemocracy poll, Between 2008 and 2017, 12 American Christian right organizations around the world spent $280 million to fund anti-gender and anti-LGBTQIA+ campaigns.. “This figure,” the French study continues, “represents only the resources of organizations registered as non-profits. It does not take into account religious figures, “philanthropists”, conservatives and their various private funding, as well as funding that comes directly from the States. The European Parliamentary Forum (EPF) report on anti-right funding indicates that in Europe, most of this money comes from money from the American Christian right, as well as from Russia.
In the face of this network that is expanding like wildfire, it is important to understand who is really on the side of women, of all women, be they poor, transgender, young, old, lesbian, with disabilities, according to the authors of the report. “Around the world, feminist movements are at the forefront of fighting this “backlash”. and make the social changes needed to achieve gender equality and end gender-based and sexual violence,” the report says. Cash Fund in 2020 concludes that “feminist movements play an important role in gaining and advancing women’s rights on a wide range of issues, including violence against women, access to services for children, inheritance and land rights, reproductive rights and political representation” .
Source: Elle