In August of 1920, Congress ratified the 19th amendment, delivering voting rights to American women. This year’s Women’s History Month, celebrated in March, honors these accomplishments, more than a century later. Yet, for all the progress feminists have made around the world in the last century, recent years have been marked by a spike in violence against women.
Samia Suluhu Hassan, Kamala Harris, and Nanaia Mahuta have all made history this year as the first women of color elected to their respective positions of power. Despite these breakthroughs, in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, rape has become a weapon of war against women in the ongoing civil war. Rape is being used by soldiers on both sides of the conflict as a means of violently controlling, punishing, or incapacitating women. Although the #MeToo movement has brought global attention to cases of sexual assault, many countries still aren’t moving in the right direction. For instance, on March 19, Turkey dropped out of the Istanbul Convention, a 2011 pledge designed to protect women from domestic violence and promote gender equality.
In the U.S., the Atlanta shootings have brought international attention to the dehumanization of Asian women that has occurred in our country for centuries. The Minnesota State Supreme Court recently ruled that rape can be designated as a less severe charge if the victim voluntarily consumed alcohol prior to the attack; the justices found that the victim’s intoxication qualified as “mental incapacitation.”
Laws and in the U.S. have time and time again fallen short of protecting women’s rights. The Violence Against Women Act was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1994. Designed to protect women against rape and other forms of sexual harrasment, the Act expired in 2018. It offered $1.6 billion over 6 years to the investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against women. It also created the Office of Violence Against Women within the Department of Justice. In 2012, upon the Act’s first reauthorization, it was expanded to include protections for same-sex couples and victims of sex trafficking. The Act finances community violence prevention programs, safe houses, specialized programs for immigrant women and disabled women, and legal aid for the survivors of domestic violence. Despite the benefits from this Act, Congress let the bill expire in 2018. While the Act was re-instituted in 2019 as part of a separate spending bill, it expired again only a few weeks later.
With every stride toward gender equality there is always some stipulation — some “yet” accompanied by a body count. So, as another Women’s History month ends, I wonder what this universal truth looks like today. The fact remains that sexism is still very much present from the spike in cases of domestic violence to the gender pay gap.
But I still see hope in the fight for gender equity. I see it in the House of Representatives, where the same Violence Against Women Act that sat inactive on a desk in Washigton for three years was pushed to renewal by the most female-identifying House of Representatives in American history. I see it in the deconstruction of the gender binary by our generation. Gender discrimination continues to exist, and feminists will continue to fight to dismantle the patriarchy wherever they see it. Happy Women’s History Month, and please tell your senator to renew the Violence Against Women Act.
