Gender and Protest

This chapter discusses the role played by women’s rights protest in illuminating gendered harms and demanding the recognition and realisation of women’s human rights. Focusing on the norms and mandates of the United Nations, it considers the way that human rights have expanded to accommodate the demands and absorb discourses of women’s rights protest. It then examines the key challenges posed to women’s protests across the world and discusses the strategies, cross-border influences and discourses of women’s rights protests. It does so with particular reference to the Women’s March on Washington; #MeToo; Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom movement; and protests in Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover of August 2021. The chapter places its analysis within political and social context, noting that women’s rights protesters have been particularly vulnerable in authoritarian and illiberal settings where women experience widespread human rights abuses. The chapter also considers the role played by social media in providing a critical forum for mobilisation and also for the conduct of protests in countries where street demonstration has become unsafe. The chapter concludes with an examination of counter-movements that have coalesced under the mantle of gender ideology and the threat they pose to women’s human rights.