Women’s rights in 2022: how they were violated and how they were fought for!
IRINA MIROCHNIK
In the past year 2022, women’s rights and the struggle for them have repeatedly found themselves in the spotlight of the press and society: from the United States, where the country’s Supreme Court overturned a decision guaranteeing the right to abortion at the constitutional level, and ending with Iran, where mass protests erupted over death of student Mahsa Amini.
Present Tense tells what events have had an impact on the lives and rights of women in different countries in 2022.
Reproductive rights
One of the main topics of the past summer was the decision of the US Supreme Court. In June 2022, he considered that abortion was no longer a constitutional right of citizens. The court overturned the previous decision in the Roe v. Wade case, taken back in 1973. According to him, any woman could terminate a pregnancy during the first trimester, regardless of place of residence. Since June 2022, the decision to allow or prohibit abortions in their territory is left to the discretion of the states themselves. In 13 of them, this procedure has already been declared a criminal offense.
In total, abortion is completely prohibited in 24 countries worldwide: thus, it affects the rights of almost 90 million women living there (according to the American Center for Reproductive Rights https://reproductiverights.org/maps/worlds-abortion-laws/?country=AUS&category[1352]=1352&indications[1366]=1366&indications[1370]=1370).
At the same time, while in the United States women protested against the decision of the Supreme Court, in 2022 in other countries women were guaranteed the right to terminate a pregnancy. In Latin America, following Mexico and Argentina (where law changes were adopted a year earlier), in February 2022, the Colombian Constitutional Court decriminalized abortions up to 24 weeks.
Prior to this, the procedure was officially allowed only if the pregnancy was the result of rape or threatens the life or health of the mother. Amnesty International called the court’s decision “a historic victory for the women’s rights movement, which has fought for them for decades.” https://time.com/6242916/womens-rights-abortion-iran-colombia-ukraine/
In September 2022, the Supreme Court of India ruled that a woman’s marital status cannot affect her right to an abortion and guaranteed those who are unmarried the right to terminate a pregnancy up to 24 weeks. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/10/what-a-landmark-ruling-on-abortion-will-mean-for-women-in-india/
Prior to this, the current laws, firstly, stigmatized the unmarried patient, and secondly, limited her right to an abortion for up to 20 weeks. Women who were formally married, divorced, widowed, or sexually abused (according to the 1971 law) were eligible for the procedure for medical reasons.
An important step in terms of protecting women’s reproductive rights has been taken in Spain. In April 2022, amendments to the abortion law came into force in the country. This is not about the right to a procedure (it was guaranteed back in 2010), but about protecting women from psychological pressure from outside.
Now, activists or medical professionals who try to “prevent a woman from exercising her right to voluntary termination of pregnancy through intrusive, abusive, intimidating and threatening actions” can be held criminally liable (maximum punishment – up to a year in prison or community service).
On the day the law was signed, demonstrators outside the parliament building in Madrid said that by protesting against abortion and addressing (often very importunately) patients outside clinics, they were not forcing women to keep the child, but simply “praying for life.”
The main reason why the debate around the reproductive health of women in the world does not subside is the religious factor, says Sofya Rusova, spokeswoman for the Consortium of Women’s Non-Governmental Associations, which has been defending the rights of women victims of violence in Russia for almost 30 years: “The most acute issue is the right on abortion arises in countries where the church plays a large role in society – in the United States, in Poland.
In addition, it is convenient for society when a woman is limited in some way, primarily in her rights. Finally, there is a third factor: incompetent officials who believe that prohibition measures will give birth control and help increase the population of the country. That is, these are attempts by politicians to show at the expense of women that they care about the interests of the people.
The right to look how you want
In some countries, the authorities are trying not only to control a woman’s body in the context of reproductive rights, but also to influence how women look. And we are talking not only about clothes, but also about appearance in general.
The main event related to the right of a woman to wear what she sees fit and look the way she wants, and not as the authorities or religion prescribes to her, were mass protests in India wounds that began due to the death of 22-year-old student Mahsa Amini. In September 2022, she was arrested by the “vice police” for violating the law on wearing a hijab – allegedly for wearing a headscarf incorrectly.
Three days after her arrest, Mahsa Amini died. Family and loved ones believe that the beatings were the cause, while the authorities assured that the girl died of a heart attack. Amid unabated protests, in early December, Attorney General Mohammad Jaafar Montazeri announced the abolition of the religious police, which monitors compliance with the Islamic dress code. However, he stressed that this does not change Iran’s mandatory hijab laws.
According to media reports, since the beginning of the protests in Iran, more than 18,000 people have been arrested and 11 death sentences have been handed down for participating in demonstrations.
“We look at what is happening in Iran from the outside and do not know what is really happening there. And people are detained there, they can be executed and killed – and this is very scary,” says Sofya Rusova. The human rights activist emphasizes that in order to change the situation with women’s rights in Iran, a more decisive reaction from the international community is needed. “A new generation of women is trying to fight, but the repression is very strong,” Rusova said.
Another country whose residents feel the strongest pressure is Turkmenistan, where a “ban on beauty” is actively promoted in 2022. The authorities, led by new President Serdar Berdimuhamedov, are categorically opposed to women getting Botox injections, mammoplasty or lip correction – because of this, in April 2022, dozens of flight attendants and conductors in the country lost their jobs.
At the same time, there are no official statements from the leadership, but the party’s policy is carried out on the ground in state structures, as well as simply on the streets: women are stopped, detained and fined for enlarged lips or extended eyelashes.
In general, the appearance of Turkmen women has worried the country’s leadership for the past 20 years: first, a national dress code was introduced for students and civil servants. At the same time, measures were taken in parallel, which were not followed by any official explanations from the authorities. So, in 2018, the country stopped importing women’s swimwear and shorts, then – hair bleaching products, light hair dyes and materials for eyelash and nail extensions. Since 2017, women have been banned from driving.
In 2022, already under the new president, the infringement of women’s rights continued. Now employees of state corporations are required to go to work in national costumes, and beauty salons have been banned from doing hair lightening, tattooing, all types of extensions and cosmetic injections. Even haircuts can only be done not short. In state institutions, women are refused service if they come in trousers. In schools, teachers check the length of the girls’ nails and forbid them to use cosmetics.
Right to education
Among those whose lives in 2022 continued to change for the worse due to the political regime were residents of Afghanistan: this year, women in the country were deprived of access to education at all. First, the Taliban movement that came to power (recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in many countries of the world, including Russia) banned middle and high school girls from attending school in March 2022.
On December 21, the authorities announced that women would no longer be able to study at universities, and the next day, girls were also banned from going to primary school. The Taliban explain their decisions by their desire to create “an appropriate Islamic environment” in Afghanistan.
To this end, the new authorities have limited the movement of women: no more than 72 km without an escort of a male relative. Separate visits to parks have also been introduced, women can no longer go to gyms. In addition, the Taliban banned international non-governmental organizations from employing local women. After that, three leading NGOs announced the suspension of their activities in Afghanistan, and Western countries sharply condemned the policy of the authorities.
Finally, the policy pursued by the Taliban has led to a deterioration in the quality of life of the people of Afghanistan, which, in turn, leads to the infringement of women’s rights already in infancy. Thus, families unable to provide their daughters with food enter into early marriages in order to receive a mahr (in Islamic tradition, a gift from the groom).
According to UNICEF, parents in Afghanistan now make arrangements with the groom’s family immediately after the birth of their daughters. “Now in Afghanistan there is a complete deprivation of women of any subjectivity and their transfer to the section of some thing,” says human rights activist Sofya Rusova. At the same time, she notes: despite harsh repression, women in Afghanistan come out to protest – risking losing not only their freedom, but also their lives.
The right to live
In life-threatening Neither the situation in 2022 affected women who found themselves in the zone of armed conflict, primarily residents of Ukraine. According to the latest UN data, there are now about 7.8 million refugees in Europe. Already in May, the total number of refugees worldwide reached 100 million people.
Based on the experience of previous and current military conflicts, since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, human rights activists have been talking about the increased risk of sexualized violence that refugees may face. There are no official statistics on how many women from Ukraine have suffered from sexualized violence. But there are testimonies of survivors in the occupied territories and those who left for safe places.
It will be possible to investigate such crimes against Ukrainian women more effectively, among other things, due to the fact that Ukraine, despite the war, ratified the Istanbul Convention this year, Sofya Rusova notes. The document most fully spells out the standards for observing women’s rights not only during wars, but also in peacetime – and, for example, this document has not yet been signed in Russia.
If we evaluate the overall picture of the observance of women’s rights in the world this year, then it will be uneven, the human rights activist says. “In some countries, we have seen an improvement in the status of women: in this regard, changes are especially important in countries that are considered to be not very developed [in the context of civil rights],” Rusova emphasizes.
For example, in Egypt and Gabon, legislation has come into force that protects women from domestic violence and, in general, their rights. At the same time that women in Gabon were allowed to work without the consent of their husbands, other countries took a huge step back. For example, in Sudan they returned to the execution of unfaithful wives by stoning.
https://www.currenttime.tv/a/prava-zhenschin-v-2022-godu/32206524.html
[Writer Irina Mirochnik is the President at IMMER Group & Doctor of Philosophy in Law(PhD)]
(Images from different sources, Headline Image: Rally against the rape of Ukrainian women by Russian soldiers in front of the Ministry of Economy of Germany.)
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