Silencing women’s voices: state and de facto state architecture denying women political agency
Summary
Amid the 2024 election super cycle, a global backlash is gaining momentum, marked by the rise of authoritarian governance and growing hostility toward women’s rights. Both state and de facto state actors continue to challenge the fulfilment of the fundamental rights of women and girls in a way that reinforces women’s disempowerment and disenfranchisement, while solidifying their own power and control. Made most visible over the last three and a half years in Afghanistan, the Taliban has exemplified a model of patriarchal authoritarianism that risks inspiring emulation. The model is a state architecture of subjugation and suppression that criminalizes women’s freedoms with a crippling two-fold effect: subordinating women and normalising gender inequality; and denying women the opportunities to cultivate the experiences and skills necessary to emerge as political agents. This system effectively deprives women of the tools and normative frameworks needed to build leadership and agency, and instead normalizes protectionist justifications for structural inequality.
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Summary
Amid the 2024 election super cycle, a global backlash is gaining momentum, marked by the rise of authoritarian governance and growing hostility toward women’s rights. Both state and de facto state actors continue to challenge the fulfilment of the fundamental rights of women and girls in a way that reinforces women’s disempowerment and disenfranchisement, while solidifying their own power and control. Made most visible over the last three and a half years in Afghanistan, the Taliban has exemplified a model of patriarchal authoritarianism that risks inspiring emulation. The model is a state architecture of subjugation and suppression that criminalizes women’s freedoms with a crippling two-fold effect: subordinating women and normalising gender inequality; and denying women the opportunities to cultivate the experiences and skills necessary to emerge as political agents. This system effectively deprives women of the tools and normative frameworks needed to build leadership and agency, and instead normalizes protectionist justifications for structural inequality.
Read the full article here.