Online ‘Manosfer’ moves Mizogini to the mainstream

The return blow against gender equality is one of the findings in a large UN report, UN Agency for Gender Equality, Progress so far in progress in improving women around the world.

This latest version of the study, which is updated every five years, comes in high insecurity, because several donors announces the main financing cuts, which leads to religious service disorders for women around the world.

Report measures measures in which goals are revolutionary Women’s rights in accordance Adopted in Beijing in 1995. years. About a quarter of the surveyed countries were recorded to deal with feminism and gender equality.

However, not all the bad news: there were many encouraging signs of progress in the last thirty years, from the legal protection of women, services and supports of domestic abuse survivors and workplace prohibitions in the workplace.

Before starting the report, Laura Turquet, Deputy Chief of the Research and Data Team on Wivesand Lydia Alpizar, Costarin Feminist activist based in Mexico City, she talked to UN news On the reasons for this renewed attack from feminism and what it means for gender relations.

Laura Turquet: What we are saying is organized resistance to gains that have been made on gender equality, whether it prevents the implementation of existing liabilities, rolling or stopping new laws and policies.

Examples include rollover Roe v. Wade In the United States (the US Supreme Court decision protected the right to abortion) and a decision of several European countries for extraction from the Istanbul Convention (a contract on gender-based violence). And elsewhere, from Argentina to Zimbabwe, we saw the giving of women’s ministries, or their mandates change from focusing on gender equality on the wider focus on families and children, who lead their ability to manage policies forward.

Another element is the targeting of women’s defense counsel and women’s activists, women in politics, journalists and union daring puts their heads above the parapet and talk about gender equality.

Lydia Alpizar: The most common form of attack is harassment and defamation, including criminalization, building charges against women’s defenders for human rights, or even arbitrarily detained, turning them into political prisoners.

It can also lead to several deadly forms of violence, such as disappearances and murders. In Mexico and Central America, we documented 35,000 attacks on the and 200 murders of human rights defenders since 2012. years,

UN news: Is the situation in your region worsen?

Lydia Alpizar: Yes. When we started, we didn’t have so many murders. We currently have an open dictatorship in Nicaragua where political prisoners, including women, and there are other countries with women’s rights defenders in prison, including Mexico. There are other defenders who are in prison, such as Kenia Hernandez in Mexico, or others who protect nature in El Salvador.

Definitely see an increase in attacks on feminists working on gender-based violence, political participation of sexual and reproductive health and rights: the highest levels of abuse, which is women, when most marches and public demonstrations in women support.

UN news: What are the reasons for increased threats and violence?

Lydia Alpizar: One has to do with the way in which the agenda for gender equality and women’s rights transform the world.

We have definitely achieved progress in important areas involved in the Beijing declaration, in terms of legislation, policies and cultural transformations, really change the way women are recognized in your public and private life.

More women are leading movements that cause interest in very powerful actors, so there is a residual.

UN news: So the return shot is the answer to the progress that is done?

Laura Turquet: I think that is true to a great extent, but also goes hand in hand with the fall of the democracy strength in general. Many countries experience erosion of key democratic institutions such as freedom of printing, free and real elections and women’s rights in public.

They become the target of those who want to return to the imagined past where men and women had much more traditional role.

It is also associated with growing inequality. Several people on top seem extremely good as millions remain behind them. When people feel that they cannot access access to decent work or basic life, they are looking for sacrificial victims, whether migrants, LGBTQ people or people say.

UN News: Social media seems to have associated, bringing the previous edge of the idea into the mainstream.

Lydia Alpizar: We saw an increase in such species of narratives. Social media is a large platform for the spread of misoginistic and sexist ideas and women’s rights defenders are called bad mothers to stigmatize the work they do and there is a trend of legitimized violence against them.

Laura Turquet: There was a development of the “Masosphere” of Internet ecosystems in which they are extremely and obsolete ideas, especially about violence against women, but also associated with very narrow types of masculinity ideas.

But I also want to say that we are online spaces and social media where feminists can be organized and connecting to other children’s social movement. I think we just have to make sure that these spaces are safe and use the mission and violent internet environment so that women do not aim.

UN News: The balance is the world in a better place, when it comes to gender relations?

Lydia Alpizar: Yes, absolutely. In the countries where I work, gender relationships are transformed and the world is a different place for women and gender mismatched people.

Ther is hope, but we are worried about the challenges we are currently facing.

Laura Turquet: There was significant progress since 1995. years. The share of women in parliaments doubled, violence against women is in the political agenda in a way that it was not thirty years ago, and mortality of mother and motherfoot.

But there is still so much to do. We need to make sure that 2025. years that do not return, to continue to fight for justice, and we continue to continue ourselves forward due to the rights of women and girls.