This International Women’s Day (8 March) falls after a year in which we have seen the continuation of gender backlash forces around the world. Women’s reproductive rights are being increasingly targeted, online gender based violence is multiplying in diverse contexts, and in many settings progress on LGBTQI+ and Trans rights is being reversed.
In this context, researchers working on the Countering Backlash programme, within which IDS is a partner, write about different ways that equity can be embraced, and backlash resisted, in their respective contexts.
5 ways Brazil can embrace equity
2023 has been politically significant for Brazil. We celebrated the inauguration of President Luís Inácio Lula da Silva but were left reeling from the devastating coup attempt in Brasília on 8 January by Jair Bolsonaro supporters. After four years of a neofascist government, his supporters vandalised symbols of Brazilian democracy.
Shortly after the attempted coup, a humanitarian crisis shot onto the news. 570 Yanomami children – one of the remaining indigenous groups in the Amazon – have died in the last four years. With a new government now in charge, and for International Women’s Day 2023, Luire Campelo and Cecília M. B. Sardenberg from NEIM write on five ways Brazil can better #EmbraceEquity.
Read the full blog on the Countering Backlash website
5 ways Kenya can embrace equity
The LGBTQ+ community’s challenges in Kenya continue unabated against the backdrop of social exclusion based on sexual and gender identities. These challenges are increasingly seen as being interdependent and shaped by a multitude of different pressures that converge within the gender and development sector. With this in mind, and for International Women’s Day 2023, Phil E. Otieno from ADSOCK writes on five ways Kenya can better #EmbraceEquity.
Read the full blog on the Countering Backlash website
Digital spaces must be safer for Muslim women in India
Internet use in India has the widest gender gap in the Asia-Pacific region. Data shows that women are far less likely to use the internet than men and that they are also less likely to own a mobile phone than men. The growing gender divide in digital participation comes not only from a lack of access but also as a result of women and girls being actively pushed out of participation in digital spaces by worsening cyber violence, an issue further inflamed by Covid-19.
In this blog, Kausumi Saha from Gender at Work shares just some of these attacks made against women and girls online in India, and suggest ways that India can change this to #EmbraceEquity.
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