Being a feminist in 2025

The conservative backlash sweeping around the globe is contributing to massive pushbacks in advances for women and girls, and women in Aotearoa are not immune.

According to UN Women, gender disparities are worsening. The organisation believes closing gaps in legal protections and removing discriminatory laws could take another 286 years based on the current rate of change.

While this backlash is happening in countries as diverse as Afghanistan and Poland, it is also happening in the Western world, as in the destruction of abortion rights in the US, with the overturning of Roe v Wade (June 2022). That ruling had been a milestone in women’s rights and had defined abortion as a personal choice and not the business of government. The fall of Roe v Wade meant that states could bring in serious restrictions to abortion or ban them entirely, as has happened across the US.

These new changes to abortion laws impose restrictions on elective abortion have massive consequences for the health and safety of anyone who’s pregnant. Badly written – perhaps deliberately bad– the legislation delays life-saving treatment for conditions like ectopic pregnancy or where the mother’s health is at stake from other conditions, leading to preventable deaths.

There are also threats to the availability of medical abortion drugs, and even contraception. Then there is the Project 2025 manifesto, an extreme right-wing blueprint to transform the US government. Its manifesto on health is chilling, and even threatens interventions for infertility such as IVF.

The goal of the manifesto’s authors (a collection of heavyweight conservatives) is to get the Trump administration to remove all forms of bodily autonomy in relation to sexual and reproductive health and rights, presenting a real threat to gender-affirming care, gender identification and all healthcare for people of diverse genders and sexualities.

We have also seen the defunding of USAID which will deny pregnancy care, reproductive and sexual health care, along with education and support, for millions of women and girls, and for programmes that improve health, education and poverty across the Global South.

Should we be concerned about the rights of women in New Zealand? We can not take anything for granted. Abortion, for example, can be restricted without a law change. We have a Minister of Health who is known to have been an anti-abortion activist. While he and the Prime Minister have assured us they would not interfere with abortion law in New Zealand, they have the power to limit funding or deny essential service governance and oversight in relation to abortions.

This happened in Australia late last year when a public hospital in regional New South Wales said it wouldn’t do abortions, abruptly banning staff from providing terminations to patients “with no identified pregnancy complications”, despite both medical and surgical terminations being an aspect of healthcare to which women are legally entitled in the state.

In response to an outcry, NSW Health Minister Ryan Park later advised that the level of abortion services previously available at the hospital would be restored.

What is widely described as toxic masculinity has also seen a resurgence in recent years with the popularity of figures like US/British social media personality Andrew Tate, who is weaponising real issues facing young men, like economic hardship and high unemployment, against women by blaming gender equality and female empowerment for their problems.

Sexist and abusive attacks, like the reversal of the pro-choice slogan ‘my body, my choice’ to read ‘your body, my choice’ by US white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes have surged across social media since Donald Trump’s re-election.

Research by Amnesty International has also revealed the alarming impact that abuse and harassment on social media is having on women, with women around the world reporting stress, anxiety, or panic attacks as a result.

In New Zealand, around a third of women surveyed said they had experienced online abuse and harassment. Of these, 75 percent said they hadn’t been able to sleep well, 49 percent feared for their physical safety and 32 percent feared for the physical safety of their families as a result.

Amnesty commissioned an Ipsos MORI poll which looked at the experiences of women between the ages of 18 and 55 in Denmark, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, Sweden, the UK and USA.

Nearly a quarter of the women surveyed across these countries said they had experienced online abuse or harassment more than once, ranging from 16 percent in Italy to 33 percent in the US.

Every woman I know who has any kind of media profile where she critiques patriarchal or white supremacist behaviour has experienced this, on a continuum from patronising comments to abuse and nasty threats.

Even posts on the recent school lunch debacle have attracted unpleasant, sexist, mother-blaming comments.

How to respond to these multiple threats, many of which are outside our control?

One way of supporting women’s rights is to follow and support Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand (ALRANZ). Or support Women’s Refuge by donating a safe night.

We can all also critique efforts to silence women, such as those men on LinkedIn and other platforms who mansplain and gaslight women in general, and particularly non-Pākehā women. My suggestion is that you set a quota, to avoid too much aggravation. Block 90 percent of them but let rip every now and then.

Point out to those in favour of platforming misogynists, transphobes or racists, that it is not supporting free speech, but validating hate speech.

And remind them to make their own kids’ Marmite sandwiches and think about their privilege as they castigate struggling mums from the luxury of the Koru Lounge.