Women’s Rights in Retreat (and Why It Matters Now)

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Right now, on both sides of the Atlantic and around the world, hard-won rights that many of us assumed were permanent are being chipped away — piece by piece, law by law, funding cut by funding cut.

This isn’t “politics as usual.”
This is a rollback — not just of policies, but of bodily autonomy, economic freedom, healthcare access, and legal equality — and it’s happening at a pace and scale that should make anyone who cares about equality sit up and pay attention.

1. Reproductive Rights Under Assault

Abortion and reproductive autonomy are under direct attack in multiple arenas — not just in courtrooms, but in everyday access to healthcare.

In the United States, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, access to abortion care became uneven and fragile. But what many people still don’t fully grasp is how far the erosion has spread:

  • Provisions that funded reproductive healthcare services — not just abortion, but cancer screenings, STI testing, contraception, and preventive care — are being rolled back, jeopardizing clinics and services for millions of women and low-income people. Planned Parenthood affiliates have warned that cuts to Medicaid reimbursements could force closures of hundreds of clinics, severely limiting access to essential care across many states. 

  • Attacks on contraception rights — once assumed protected — are gaining traction. After Roe’s overturn, lawmakers hostile to reproductive autonomy have increasingly targeted access to birth control, framing it as a next frontier of restriction. 

And this is not just about individual rights — there are real social and economic impacts: data show that when reproductive rights are restricted, women’s educational and career trajectories are significantly altered, lifetime earnings drop, and even children’s outcomes are affected. 

2. Political Shifts Are Not Abstract — They Have Real Consequences

A number of governments — particularly in the U.S. — are actively rolling back protections. It’s not only reproductive rights:

  • Policies have been issued that redefine gender strictly as a binary assigned at conception, eliminating federal recognition of transgender people and cutting off access to gender-affirming care and identification documents aligned with gender identity. 

  • Civil and human rights protections more broadly are being undermined, with calls from advocacy groups warning that federal agencies are prioritizing rollback of civil rights rather than protection. 

Human Rights Watch has warned that these policy shifts don’t just affect U.S. citizens — they set a global tone where authoritarian leaders feel emboldened to erode women’s rights and girls’ autonomy around the world. 

And it’s not limited to reproductive autonomy: even protections against violence, access to education, and basic civil liberties show signs of deterioration in fragile or conflict-affected states. 

3. What This Means in Everyday Life

Rights that seem abstract — like access to healthcare or the ability to make decisions about your own body — are actually the scaffolding for so many other freedoms:

  • Being able to decide if and when to have children affects economic participation, educational opportunity, housing stability, and psychological well-being.

  • Losing access to basic reproductive services doesn’t just limit choice — it increases unsafe procedures, creates financial insecurity, and reinforces systemic inequalities.

  • Cutting funding for clinics doesn’t just reduce abortion access — it also removes cancer screenings, contraceptive care, and wellness exams that keep communities healthy. 

And while we often talk about these as women’s issues, they are human issues: they touch families, gender-diverse people, and entire communities.

4. This Is a Global Trend — Not an Isolated One

Reports from international organizations and United Nations agencies indicate that one in four countries reported a backlash against women’s rights in 2024, even after decades of progress toward gender equality. 

A growing wave of resistance to gender equality — often tied to conservative or authoritarian movements — is reshaping policies on sexual and reproductive health, anti-violence protections, and legal equality in multiple regions. 

In some places, the regression is extreme: in Afghanistan, women are banned from most work, education, and public life under Taliban rule — a situation human rights advocates have described as gender apartheid. 

5. Where There Is Setback, There Is Also Resistance

Even amid this rollback, there are pockets of resistance and progress:

  • In some countries, feminist movements continue to win legal reforms and public support for equality. 

  • Grassroots activists are pushing back against repression and advocating for rights even in the toughest contexts. 

  • International organizations continue to call for gender-inclusive protections, health access, and economic empowerment. 

This is part of why movements like reproductive justice and gender equality remain essential — not imaginary or ideological, but practical defense of bodily autonomy, economic participation, basic healthcare, and human dignity.

6. The ERA: Why “Women Already Have Equality” Is a Dangerous Myth

One of the most persistent myths in conversations about women’s rights is this:

“Women already have equality under the law.”

We do not.

The United States Constitution does not explicitly guarantee equality on the basis of sex.

Read that again.

Despite decades of progress, court cases, legislation, and cultural change, women’s equality has never been formally codified in the Constitution. That’s what the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was — and still is — meant to do.

The ERA’s language is simple and powerful:

“Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

That’s it.
No loopholes. No asterisks. No “unless the political climate changes.”

So Why Isn’t the ERA Law Yet?

The ERA was first introduced in 1923. It passed Congress in 1972 — over fifty years ago — and has since been ratified by the required number of states. And yet, it still hasn’t been formally adopted due to legal and political obstruction around deadlines that were never part of the amendment itself.

In other words:
The fight isn’t about whether women deserve equality — it’s about whether those in power are willing to lock it in.

Why Court Decisions and Laws Aren’t Enough

Without the ERA, women’s rights are protected through a patchwork of court rulings and legislation — many of which can be weakened, overturned, or reinterpreted.

That’s exactly what we’ve seen happen with reproductive rights.

For decades, Roe v. Wade was treated as settled law. But because it wasn’t grounded in an explicit constitutional guarantee of sex equality, it was vulnerable. Once it fell, so did the illusion that women’s rights were “safe.”

Without the ERA:

  • Gender discrimination cases are judged under lower standards of scrutiny than race discrimination.

  • Protections can vary wildly depending on the political makeup of courts.

  • Rights can be rolled back without violating the Constitution — because the Constitution never explicitly named women in the first place.

Why “Women Already Have Equality” Is a Privileged Argument

The idea that women already have equality usually comes from those who:

  • Haven’t needed constitutional protection

  • Haven’t had their bodily autonomy legislated away

  • Haven’t experienced economic penalties for pregnancy, caregiving, or gendered labor

  • Haven’t watched protections vanish with the stroke of a judicial pen

If women truly had equality under the Constitution:

  • Our bodily autonomy wouldn’t be negotiable.

  • Pay equity wouldn’t still require lawsuits and “opt-in” protections.

  • Healthcare decisions wouldn’t hinge on zip codes or judges’ beliefs.

  • Gender-based discrimination wouldn’t need to be proven through legal gymnastics.

Equality that depends on interpretation is not equality.
Equality that can be revoked is not equality.

Why the ERA Still Matters — Right Now

The ERA isn’t symbolic. It’s structural.

Codifying sex equality in the Constitution would:

  • Strengthen legal protections against gender discrimination

  • Provide a constitutional foundation for reproductive rights

  • Protect LGBTQ+ people whose rights hinge on sex-based protections

  • Prevent future rollbacks from being justified as “constitutional”

At a time when rights are being stripped instead of expanded, the absence of the ERA isn’t just an oversight — it’s a vulnerability.

Why This Matters Right Now

We are at a cultural and political inflection point. Rights we thought were settled — or at least in steady progress — are now being negotiated, restricted, and redefined through legislation and court decisions.
This is not an accident. It is the result of coordinated political agendas and ideological fights over power, autonomy, and state control.

But it’s also a reminder of why movements exist — not just to expand rights, but to defend them when they are threatened.



SOURCES: 

  1. U.S. Constitution — The United States Constitution does not explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex. This absence is the foundational reason the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was proposed. See: National Archives, The Constitution of the United States.

  2. Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) — First introduced in 1923 and passed by Congress in 1972, the ERA’s text and ratification history are documented by the National Archives and the Congressional Research Service. See: National Archives, The Equal Rights Amendment; Congressional Research Service, The Proposed Equal Rights Amendment: Contemporary Ratification Issues.

  3. ERA Ratification Status — As of 2020, the ERA has been ratified by the required 38 states, though its formal adoption has been blocked due to disputed deadlines not contained in the amendment’s text. See: National Archives; Brennan Center for Justice, The Equal Rights Amendment Explained.

  4. Judicial Scrutiny Standards — Sex-based discrimination cases are evaluated under “intermediate scrutiny,” a lower standard than the “strict scrutiny” applied to race-based discrimination. This distinction is widely discussed in constitutional law analysis. See: Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute, Equal Protection.

  5. Reproductive Rights and Constitutional Vulnerability — The overturning of Roe v. Wade (2022) illustrates how rights not explicitly protected in the Constitution can be reversed. See: Supreme Court of the United States, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022).

  6. Gender Equality and the ERA — Legal scholars and advocacy organizations argue that the ERA would provide a constitutional foundation for gender equality, reproductive autonomy, and protection against discrimination. See: American Bar Association, Why the Equal Rights Amendment Is Still Needed; National Women’s Law Center, The Impact of the ERA.

  7. Body Autonomy and Feminist Frameworks — Sonya Renee Taylor’s work situates body autonomy and liberation within a broader social justice framework, acknowledging the leadership of Black women in body acceptance movements. See: Taylor, Sonya Renee. The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2018.

  8. Intersection of Gender and Race in Legal Inequality — Scholars have documented how anti-fat bias, reproductive control, and gender discrimination intersect with racism and misogyny. See: Sabrina Strings, Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia; Kimberlé Crenshaw, Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color.