Gender Backlash Archives - Countering Backlash

5 ways Uganda can #EmbraceEquity

The late 1980s was a turning point for gender justice in Uganda. The country reaffirmed gender-positive policies by embracing Affirmative Action in 1986, and incorporating Article 32 in the country’s Constitution in 1995. The article mainly addresses groups marginalised because of their gender and the historical norms that affect specific groups.

Uganda has seen many women join leadership positions both at the political and organisational levels. For instance, in the 2021 national election, 122 Members of Parliament were elected on their affirmative action positions. The affirmative action policies from the Parliament through other institutions have led to school girls from disadvantaged backgrounds accessing higher education.

Despite this progress, there has been significant pushback on the gender progress made by women’s rights organisations, women’s movement, women human rights defenders (WHRD), and feminists in Uganda. This is because the power being held by women in leadership positions is not reflected in the policies and laws passed by Parliament.

Gender backlash is happening in digital spaces and moving into offline spaces. Even though the advancement in technology comes with its advantages, it opens up women and girls using technology to online backlash, in a context where the regulation and implementation of policy to protect them from online gender-based violence is lacking. Countering Backlash partner WOUGNET is working to counter this.

For International Women’s Day 2023, we share five ways Uganda can promote gender justice within the region to better #EmbraceEquity.

1. Embrace a rights based approach to gender-justice

Some of the religious institutions in Uganda denounce gender-diverse rights, such as same-sex marriage. The globalising world intersecting with local traditions is producing unexpected ways of thinking about rights.

Religious and cultural groups command a huge following and often oppose equal rights for LGBTQI+ people, sex workers, and feminist movements, especially those that challenge the mainstream gender norms. They form and inform tactics for opposition, and intentionally hinder opportunities for WHRDs, LGBTQI+ people, and sex-worker communities to advocate for their rights, occupy public space and become a part of democratic processes. Religious institutions must encourage new understandings of gender-diverse rights and how to secure them in Uganda.

2. Stop violence against feminist activists and human rights defenders

The existence of different methods of violence against feminist activists, human rights defenders, and sexual rights advocates continues to evolve and manifest differently in spaces (online and offline). These attacks are through words, phrases, images and representations of women in media, where feminism is framed as the main cause of women’s problems. The raiding of LGBTQI+ shelters, the killings of LGBTQI+, and protests against same-sex marriage are a combination of direct and visible attacks on activists.

The government must stop shrinking aid programmes using the Non-Governmental Organisations Act and Anti-Money Laundering Act. They should also make funding available to research the forms and types of violent attacks happening online and offline, and include methods for public awareness on how backlash can impact women’s rights and progress on gender justice that can affect Uganda’s socio-economic development.

3. End digital and online attacks

Advances in the use of technology and digital platforms have a flip-side: the same technologies are used as tools to share masculine narratives and to attack gender advocates, feminists, and sexual rights advocates. They are used to push back gender equality achievements such as women political candidates losing seats in Parliament, for instance, the former Member of Parliament Sylvia Rwabwogo case of cyber harassment worsened by biased media reporting led to Rwabwogo’s loss of a seat in the next Parliament.

The internet can enable and also promote unwanted male gaze which causes intrusion of women’s privacy online and offline hence affecting women in public spaces. There have been increased regulation of online spaces using existing laws such as the Computer Misuse (Amendment) Act 2022 and the Uganda Communications Act 2013. The latter has been used by the government to disrupt and shut down the internet, restricting individual expression online. Internet shutdowns worsen the inequality and injustice women already suffer.

Gender activists are progressing in bridging gender inequalities, reproductive rights, and freedom from gender-based violence. However, access and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) can help to bridge the gaps or deepen the gaps every time the internet is shut down or blocked.

There needs to be more training on network measurement in order to quantify and qualify the impact of internet shutdowns on gender justice and women’s rights online.

4. Support civic space

Civic space in Uganda is shrinking. There has been government interference and threats to close some civil society organisations, including many prominent organisations working to promote gender justice. In February 2023, Trade Minister David Bahati cited about 30 non-governmental organisations alleged to be involved in the promotion of homosexuality in Uganda that will be investigated. He added that the list of NGOs will soon be submitted to relevant security bodies for formal investigations into their activities with a view to closing their operations in Uganda. The anti-homosexuality bill will be introduced to the Parliament of Uganda to target people wishing to engage in homosexual acts, as well as organisations working on LGBTQI+ rights in the country.

In the past, women-led civil society organisations that are working with structurally silenced women such as lesbians and sex workers expressed facing challenges in their advocacy work because they are generally considered groups that are working with people engaged in criminal and immoral activities.

We must work with and build the capacity of the key stakeholders such as policymakers, journalists, and the media on the impact of shrinking civic space and gender-restrictive attitudes and discourses.

5. Support organisations fighting for gender justice in Uganda

There are local organisations, groups or people who are doing important and exciting work in Uganda related to the issues. These organisations include the Refugee Law Project, Uganda Women’s Network (UWONET), Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET), Human Rights Watch, Citizens’ Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda (CCEDU), Oxfam Uganda, Sexual Minority Right Uganda (SMUG), Chapter Four Uganda, and among others.

Looking ahead

Although there is significant backlash against gender rights at the moment in the country, there are also opportunities to create a gender-just Uganda. We must work together to #EmbraceEquity.

5 ways Kenya can #EmbraceEquity

The present decade has witnessed a visible backlash against gender equality and the women’s human rights agenda across continents – and Kenya is no exception. This backlash has immediate and long-term implications for women, men and individuals who identify as not sexually- or gender-conforming, and for the consolidation of democracy, social cohesion, and economic growth in any country.

Gender inequality undermines the hard-fought values of human rights, equality and freedom embedded in Kenya’s Constitution 2010 and in other national and international instruments that Kenya is a signatory to.

The LGBTQ+ community’s challenges in Kenya continue unabated against the backdrop of social exclusion based on sexual and gender identities. These challenges are increasingly seen as being interdependent and shaped by a multitude of different pressures that converge within the gender and development sector.

With this in mind, and for International Women’s Day 2023, here are five ways Kenya can better #EmbraceEquity.

1. Generating and managing knowledge

The research, co-creation and framing of gender issues can significantly help in understanding gender and patriarchal backlash. There is a need to work with different people and organisations to improve the understanding, nature and forms of this backlash.

Knowledge generation and management can strengthen interactions and debates about gender and patriarchal backlash, and find ways of countering this backlash in different contexts in Kenya. Various actors can draw on their past work and the existing knowledge of how to package, disseminate and add to the evidence of backlash where it is lacking. But we must understand how to communicate research findings without doing more harm. This can be done by properly positioning emerging gender equality issues to inform policy and programming.

2. Positioning policy

It is pivotal for all stakeholders to address the erosion of gender policies and agendas at the national and county levels away from egalitarian ideals. Efforts to change political, socio-economic, cultural, and religious norms along with power relations which prevent gender equality should go together with efforts to identify, disrupt, adjust or dismantle policies, structures and systems which reinforce negative norms and stereotypes that strengthen gender backlash.

Policies should be framed to engage different groups of men and boys in overcoming gender inequality. It should also help them overcome and address their own gender-related vulnerabilities and oppression. This can bring forth a major shift in debates about the ‘boy child’ or generalised ideas about ‘men in crisis’, thus guarding against victim blaming and the impression that women empowerment is being advanced at the expense of men and boys.

3. Transforming attitudes and social norms

Enabling an environment to change attitudes and social norms needs to be informed by contexts. Decision-makers should put in place efforts to support communities in confronting stereotypes, attitudes, values and structures that perpetuate social exclusion and promote gender backlash. This can be achieved by consolidating and building upon knowledge and practices that inspire action among different groups in addressing social justice issues. Ultimately, this requires structural and systemic transformations towards favourable social norms, attitudes and behaviours at institutional, community and individual levels.

4. Promoting accountability

There must be more work done with men through gender transformative approaches to address negative social norms. This should also extend to encouraging dialogue between male activists to support Women’s Rights Organisations (WROs) on accountability with regards to development and gender equality agenda. This is because a lot of men are experiencing hesitancy leading to shifting roles toward gender equality. This is particularly important in the socio-cultural space between what used to be and what is currently expected in the human rights space.

Working with men and boys for gender equality is crucial. A comprehensive engagement process is needed to ensure that women are not targeted or ostracised by men in the belief that measures to address entrenched gender inequality are unfair and a form of ‘reverse discrimination’. Working with men and boys to address underlying social norms and help them become more gender-equitable and address their own gender-related vulnerabilities will help to counter patriarchal backlash on a large scale.

5. Building advocacy and movements

Kenya is a signatory to many international treaties, conventions and instruments on gender equality and human rights. There is a need for like-minded partners and stakeholders in the field of gender justice, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), Women’s Rights Organizations, feminists, and male allies to forge strong alliances to advocate for the fulfilment of the commitments made by the government

CSOs and Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) have acted as catalysts and progress leaders in legislative and policy developments over the years. Advocates for Social Change Kenya (ADSOCK) alongside organisations such as the Wangu Kanja Foundation (WKF), Center for Rights Awareness and Education (CREAW), African Women’s Development and Communications Network (FEMNET), Collaborative Center for Gender and Development (CCGD), Gender Violence Recovery Center (GVRC) among others, have been in the forefront in advocating and championing for gender equality including addressing the rights of survivors of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in Kenya.

Looking ahead

It is critical for all actors in every sphere of society to openly condemn all forms of gender inequalities. They can do this by providing the impetus to confront the environments where social exclusion and discrimination are rationalised, justified, internalised, normalised, and allowed to thrive. An equal world where everyone’s rights are respected, protected, preserved and promoted is possible. We must #EmbraceEquity!

Women, life, freedom: Women’s bodies at the centre of the Iran protests

Zan, Zidegi, Azadi (‘women, life, freedom’) is the central slogan of the ongoing women-led protests that have shaken Iran and captured the world’s attention. The slogan emerged from the Kurdish freedom movement and has been taken up by Iranian protestors. It is a call for the reclamation of women’s bodily autonomy, an issue at the core of the current movement.

The women-led protests started after Masha Amini, died in police custody. Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian, was arrested during a visit to Tehran by the morality police for violating ‘hijab’ laws. She was sent to a ‘re-education’ camp and later died. The images of Amini’s brutalised body went viral and triggered widespread protests led by women. Women are removing their headscarves (hijab) in public and cutting off their hair in a bold defiance of a law that requires mandatory head covering. The protests, the largest since the 2009 Green movement, have been met by a brutal crackdown by the authorities, and several media sources have reported deaths.

Women’s Bodies as Battlegrounds

Contestations over women’s bodily autonomy are not new in Iran’s history. The politicization of the hijab (and women’s bodies) started with Reza Shah Pahlavi – the father of the deposed Shah, who banned wearing the veil in public. Women who veiled faced harassment in public. The law was abolished a few years later as it was unpopular with devout women and the general public, but it had cemented the hijab (and by extension women’s bodies) as an ideological battleground. After the 1979 Islamic revolution, veiled women came to symbolise national identity for the new regime, and hijab-wearing was made compulsory. This proved unpopular with women, and there were major protests led by women in post-revolutionary Iran. Compulsory veiling was written into law in 1983 but has remained contested, with the regular emergence of protest movements.

Women-led protests and state backlash

Recent protests in Iran have seen numerous strategies by women defying the state’s control over their bodies: the cutting of hair in public, the making of bonfires with headscarves, the singing and dancing in the streets; all of which change how women’s bodies are imagined and presented in public. This is not unique to Iran. Similar strategies of performing songs and dances, defying gender norms and state regulations in creative and unruly ways to claim public space and demand change are used by the Aurat March protestors to draw attention to bodily integrity issues and the Hazara women protestors in Pakistan. Anti-sexual harassment protestors at Egyptian universities used performance to draw attention to claim women’s right to say ‘no’, and the Shaheen Bagh protestors in Delhi used sit-ins and public performance to draw attention to citizenship rights.

All of these women-led protests are facing backlash from their country’s regimes, who continually attempt to discredit them and delegitimise their claims. State security forces and police have harassed and detained protestors and their allies. Given the high levels of state surveillance in these contexts acts of protests carry grave, even life-threatening, risks for the protestors, their families, and their allies.

A leaderless movement and change

As with many other women-led protests, the Iranian protests are leaderless, showing a model of distributed leadership, which enables the sustainability of the movement in the face of state clampdown. The widespread support from many men and across society is another sign of hope for Iranian women.

Time will tell whether this will be a turning point for renegotiating women’s rights in Iran, and if the wide-scale support for the women-led protests will trigger positive change. What we do know, and are seeing, is that the protestors will face severe repression. The state has implemented a social media block in an attempt to contain the protest. In the meantime, those of us that support Iranian women’s right to bodily autonomy need to find effective ways of showing our solidarity, so the protestors know they are not alone. We need to avoid exceptionalism and Islamophobic narratives that position Iran’s gender politics as static and uniquely repressive.

Backlash against women’s bodily autonomy is rising in many contexts at the moment, and it will take a collective effort, to resist it.

Empty promises: Continuing the fight for trans rights in India

Despite a rich cultural tradition of gender-fluidity, the transgender community in India have been stigmatised as a ‘criminal tribe’ through a colonial-era law. The community has struggled for their rights over decades, and only after significant engagement with the judiciary were they finally counted in the population Census of 2011.

It wasn’t until findings of an Expert Committee in 2013 into the discrimination of the transgender community that there was significant legal change. After a Public Interest Litigation, the Supreme Court of India ruled that transgender persons had the right to self-identify as male, female or a third gender. It also brought into law that the constitutional rights to life, dignity and autonomy would include the right to a person’s gender identity and sexual orientation. The government then brought in the ‘Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2019 (TG Act)’, and issued the Rules in September 2020, which are used to enforce the act.

But the transgender community has seen little change, and still face discrimination in everyday life.

“The teacher said to my father, ‘Take your son away, keep him somewhere else, I cannot teach him in school. Only if he behaves properly, I’ll be able to teach him in school’. I tried really hard but I was never able to behave ‘properly’. … my walk was different; my voice was different…”

The poster reads: “‘You shouldn’t come looking like this, You shouldn’t walk around like this, You should walk like a boy.’ This is how I would be thrown out of school.” A representative of the transgender community. Why does this injustice continue in Education despite the guarantees in the Transgender (Protection of Rights) Act 2019 and the Rules (2020)?” Credit: Centre for Health and Social Justice.

Discrimination remains

The TG Act and Rules have many provisions, including a simpler process for self-identification, setting up a Welfare Board and a Transgender Protection Cell, and creating separate infrastructure in hospitals, jails, shelter homes, as well as separate washrooms everywhere, yet none of this has been implemented.

“Despite the reading down of Section 377 or the passing of the Transgender (Protection of Rights) Act 2019, we have not received any opportunities or benefits that have been promised to us in law.

The only change is that in forms and documents there’s been the addition of the word “Others” or “Transgender” but these terms really have no benefit for us.”

The disregard of the mandatory Equal Opportunity policy in all establishments leads to continued discrimination against the community in all social settings, including families, neighbourhoods, educational institutions, public places and limits opportunities to find employment. Many in the transgender community have not had access to schooling, and are not able to read the TG Act and know what their legal rights are.

“When we approach the police, their response is, ‘Wait outside; do you expect us to listen to you right away? Are you going to give us instructions?’”

Demanding action for trans rights

The Centre for Health and Social Justice (CHSJ) (partners of Countering Backlash) and the transgender collective Kolkata Rista, led an event in July, sharing findings from a recent scoping study they conducted. The event brought together members of the transgender community along with senior officials from the police department, the health and AIDS Control department, and correctional facilities, to showcase three short films and posters which highlight the discrimination transgender people face in education, healthcare, work, and from the police.

The event started the creation of a support system for the transgender community with the institutions that attended, who must use their power to enact positive social change. Kolkata Rista also launched a community crisis response and support cell with a helpline which will respond to any incident of violence or harassment and discrimination faced by the transgender community in Kolkata. It will include a safe space for shelter and medication or counselling.

The scoping study carried out by CHSJ with people in the transgender community brought out the lack of meaningful change in their situation despite their aspirations for self-improvement. The study also found that key people in the police department, health department and HIV/AIDS prevention programmes who have the power and knowledge to enact change have not yet carried out training for their staff on the TG Act of 2019 and the Rules.

Watching the stories of their own lives and struggles unfold in the films was an emotional experience for the community members. They shared painful experiences of rejection and humiliation and how a lack of opportunities to make changes in their lives affected them. The police officials and those leading AIDS programmes pledged that they would do more to provide meaningful support after watching these films and hearing their stories.

Now, those words must become action, and we must keep a vigilant eye on progress to make sure that rights are realised.

Advocates for Social Change are tackling backlash in Kenya. Here’s how

Advocates for Social Change – Kenya (ADSOCK) see victim blaming and ‘what-about-ism’ (‘but what about men and boys?’) around sexual and gender-based violence gaining ground in the country. The organisation’s latest resource book ‘Paradigm Shift: Countering Backlash Reclaiming Gender Justice‘ provides practical ways individuals and organisations can counter this backlash.

Phil E. Otieno, Executive Director of ADOSCK, shares some reflections from their work on this.

Developing methods and knowledge

At ADSOCK we engage with a range of partners and actors in the field of gender, identifying what drives patriarchal backlash. We have been able to document how male supremacist ideologies are installed and flourish in combination with other oppressive ideologies through our capacity building workshops, and we have seen how male resentment is mobilised within diverse contexts in Kenya.

Our activities are complemented by knowledge strengthening for different audiences, by designing and delivering training workshops and modules, developing and sharing Social Behaviour Change and Communication Materials (posters, stickers, t-shirts), and the ‘Paradigm Shift: Countering Backlash Reclaiming Gender Justice’ resource book. This has been important in supporting our trainers and audience (a range of local and national gender justice actors) in understanding forms of gender backlash and by providing them with real examples of promising interventions to counter patriarchal backlash.

The resource book is one of the best, because it has all the materials that a trainer needs for proper grounding on patriarchal backlash and other elements of gender inequality

Anne, ADSOCK Trainer

We include 17 modules which provide step-by-step guidelines and practical resources that help the user in understanding a particular module and how to apply the information acquired. Feedback from practitioners and those using the resource book (particularly men) have shown that module three – ‘Roadmap to male allyship’ – and module 11 – ‘Understanding and Countering Patriarchal Backlash’ – have been of most interest and use.

The resource book is empowering and is loaded with very insightful information on Backlash including the module on male allyship towards gender equality

Steve, Family Health Options Kenya (FHOK)

Open Debates

Since inception of the project, we have conducted four workshops that brought together a diverse range of stakeholders for challenging and reflective debates and learning. They have included; women’s rights organisations, civil society organisations, university students, member of the LGBTIQ+ community, Kenya Police Service, persons with disabilities, media personalities, religious and cultural leaders, county leadership among others. The trainings helped to contextualise situations and how we internalise contested ideas.

In the workshops, a vast majority of men felt that gender equality is a ‘Western phenomenon’ (non-African) and a system aimed at destroying the so-called ‘African’ family. We also found that there is discomfort in some language, with many people feeling gender equality should be anchored in Pan-Africanism for it to be accepted. A vast majority of men expressed that ‘men are in crisis because of the feminisation of society’.

Another common trope in patriarchal backlash is ‘What-about-ism’ and victim blaming regarding sexual and gender-based violence, which is slowly but surely gaining ground in Kenya. Interestingly, we found that conversations about the ‘boy-child’ being ‘left behind’ is advanced by both men and women. This has led to a stereotyping and labelling of human rights defenders and feminists as ‘angry individuals’.

We believe that ADSOCK’s Resource Book will help people by providing an understanding of the importance of gender equality, accountability towards social justice (including identifying how patriarchal backlash happens). It also provides knowledge on how gender backlash is manifested both in online and offline spaces, critical factors contributing to the success and failures of different actors in their work on gender equality, as well as methods and approaches for challenging the status quo.

Curbing Erosion of Gender Equality and Women’s Rights

There is a need to document and analyse how backlash mobilises forms of male resentment across different contexts in Kenya; how can we tackle restrictive masculinities that may hinder men’s engagement in gender equality initiatives? A comprehensive male-engagement process is needed to ensure women are not targeted or ostracised by men’s organisations who believe that measures to address entrenched gender inequality are unfair and a form of ‘reverse discrimination’. Engaging with men and boys in the promotion of gender equality is one in many strategies for tackling the ever-growing problems of inequality, injustice and oppression.

To sustain the campaigns on gender equality, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) need support with resource mobilisation and the development of advocacy and awareness messages. CSOs also need support in building knowledge and action towards political mobilisation, along with allyship in movement and partnership building for gender and social justice. This is incredibly important in political spaces. Shifting norms concerning women’s leadership, leading towards a more transformative role for women’s collective agency – in both formal and informal settings – which both depends on and determines their individual agency. It also calls for men’s reflective allyship and support without mansplaining, patriarchal protectionism or ‘bro-option’.

Feminist protests and politics in a world of crisis

Feminist activism and organising for gender justice are rapidly evolving. We are seeing new energies and new ways of building a feminist future. This is happening in a time of multiple and interconnected crises, adversely impacting women’s, trans folk’s and non-binary people’s rights, as well as gender equality gains made in policy, discourse and practice.

To explore the challenges to feminist and gender justice activism and to identify new energies in the field, Sohela Nazneen and Awino Okech were invited to guest edit the Gender & Development journal’s special double issue on Feminist protests and politics in a world of crisis. You can also watch the authors discuss their articles in an Institute of Development Studies’s webinar held in November 2021.

Why now?

Feminist activism has faced new and diverse challenges over the past decade. The rise of conservative and populist forces, the growth of authoritarianism, racism and xenophobia, and austerity in many countries are just some of these challenges. These have led to an increased dismantling of civil liberties, freedom of speech, expression and peaceful assembly.

Across the globe, feminist and gender justice activists are recalibrating their actions to face these challenges.

From Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and climate justice activism, we are witnessing a growth of transnational and intergenerational organising. Feminist and gender activists are seizing the moment to reimagine democracy, gender and power relations, and humanity.

Feminist activism requires presence across policy, online spaces and the street…

What we explore

In this special double issue on Feminist protests and politics in a world of crisis, we set out to answer two central questions:

How are movements sustaining thriving, robust and resilient spaces and alliances in a world of multiple crises?
How is politics of solidarity created at the national and trans-national levels?

To answer these, we explore varying themes and collective mobilisations for feminist and gender justice actors through 20 articles from different regions of the world. Below are some examples of what you will find:

Nothing is as it seems: ‘discourse capture’ and backlash politics; Tessa Lewin

Tessa Lewin develops the concept of discourse capture, analysing how gender equality is undermined by right-wing political parties and women’s groups as they co-opt progressive feminist agendas. Tessa details examples from around the world, including the US pro-life movement, the ‘Vote No’ campaign in the Republic of Ireland, the ‘Anti-Homosexuality Bill’ in Uganda, and more.

Femonationalism and anti-gender backlash: the instrumental use of gender equality in the nationalist discourse of the Fratelli d’Italia party; Daria Collela

Daria Collela explores the media strategies of right-wing political parties in Italy, and how they frame people of colour, especially those of a Muslim background, as perpetrators of violence against women. Daria argues that these nationalist forces use gender equality agendas to bring together a diverse set of actors to promote racism, anti-migrant agendas and xenophobia.

The resistance strikes back: Women’s protest strategies against backlash in India; Deepta Chopra

Deepta Chopra analyses the strategies used by Muslim-women activists in Shaheen Bagh, Delhi, India. These women led a four-month-long sit-in protest against the police violence inflicted on student activists and India’s discriminatory citizenship laws. Deepta details how the grandmothers of Shaheen Bagh used inclusive frames for claiming citizenship, rotated care work duties with younger women of the community so the latter could participate, and how the performance of poetry and songs transformed the Shaheen Bagh as a space for building cross-sectional solidarity.

Visible outside, invisible inside: the power of patriarchy on female protest leaders in conflict and violence-affected settings; Miguel Loureiro and Jalila Haider

Miguel Loureiro and Jalila Haider examine the Hazara women’s protests in Balochistan, Pakistan. They look specifically at how the women went on hunger strike and drew national attention to the killing of and violence against the men of their community. Women’s participation transformed the movement from male-dominated violent protests to women-led peaceful ones. But despite women being the face of protests, they are still excluded from key decision-making structures, drawing attention to the slow pace of change.

Gendered social media to legal systems, online activism to funding systems

Other articles in this issue explore how South-South transnational solidarity is built. They examine the role of public performance, street protests and intergenerational dialogues in creating solidarity across diverse social groups and generations in the movements such as “A Rapist in Your Path” in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia and the anti-abortion rights movement the Green Wave in Argentina. There is a focus on queer and feminist activism in online spaces in Nigeria (such as #ENDSARS), Lebanon, Brazil and how online engagements help to raise contentious issues but also pose a significant risk to activists. For many authors, how to sustain movements and protect spaces for autonomous organising remain key concerns. Several of them focus on the development of alternative funding mechanisms and influencing bilateral negotiations as key pathways for sustaining activism.

Further articles analyse how having a seat at the table in Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Argentina were important for making and sustaining pro gender equality policy change and explore the ways an active and effective feminist presence in policy political spaces can help to counter gender backlash.

The strength and determination documented in the articles of feminists and gender justice activists, gives us hope for a better, equitable, fairer future.