INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day is a moment when we can reflect on and celebrate women’s achievements worldwide, but conversely it must also be an occasion when we recognise the huge barriers that that still impede women’s advance. 

Despite the fact that a veneer of juridical equality exists in the majority of (certainly not all) countries, violence against women is on the increase worldwide. Globally, according to the UN, an estimated 736 million women — almost one in three — have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their life (30 per cent of women aged 15 and older). This figure does not include sexual harassment. The figures for femicide are similarly shocking. In 2022, around 48,800 women and girls worldwide were killed by their intimate partners or other family members. This means that, on average, more than five women or girls are killed every hour by someone in their own family.

What this reveals is a very uncomfortable fact — misogyny remains embedded in the 21st-century culture bequeathed by its long history in all forms of class society. Misogyny is not simply hatred of women, it is an ideology and practice the purpose of which, when actualised, is to control and enforce women’s subordination and to uphold male patriarchal dominance. 

This subordination of women is often manifested through violence, coercive control, domestic abuse or sexual harassment. It is both a product and a manifestation of women’s oppression. Oppression is the most important means of maintaining the class relations which support class exploitation. It is a function of class society as well as being a product of it. 

Unlike discrimination, oppression is linked materially to the process of class exploitation as well as operating at “superstructural” level through the oppressive ideologies of patriarchy, sexism and misogyny. Thus we have to recognise misogyny as a global apparatus of women’s oppression in class society.

There are two main reasons why misogynist violence is on the increase throughout the world. One is due to the toxic influence of (anti)social media — in particular the “manosphere.” This is a diverse collection of websites, blogs, and online forums promoting masculinity, misogyny and opposition to feminism. Communities within the manosphere include men’s rights activists, incels (involuntary celibates), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), pick-up artists (PUA), and “fathers’ rights” groups. 

While the specifics of each group’s beliefs sometimes conflict, they are generally united in the belief that society is biased against men due to the influence of feminism, and that feminists promote misandry, or hatred of men. The manosphere overlaps with the far-right and alt-right communities. It has also been associated with online harassment and has been implicated in radicalising men into misogynist beliefs and the glorification of violence against women.

In addition we are witnessing what has been termed the “symbiosis of misogyny and violent extremism” (Pablo Castillo Diaz and Nahla Valji). 

Violent zealotry has been fuelled by the rise of fundamentalist religion. It is it is the common link between white Christian fundamentalists in Western countries and Muslim and other religious fundamentalist zealots in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. 

In fact, according to the Global Terrorism Index 2018, four groups: the Islamic State (also referred to as Isis, Isil, or Da’esh), the Taliban, Boko Haram, and al-Shabaab have been responsible for over 44 per cent of all terrorist deaths in the past decade. But all fundamentalist religions share another common link — they are all grounded on the misogynist creed of women’s subservience. They all enforce brutally restrictive attitudes towards women in terms of dress, mobility, conduct and education. Deviation from these norms is punishable by domestic abuse, state violence and death. 

But these attitudes are not confined to countries like Afghanistan and Iran, a common ideological trait and practice is apparent in the rise of right-wing nationalist authoritarian leaders in many countries of the world, who diverge in many of their policy choices but exhibit the same drive to reverse the feminist gains of the last decades.

Examples of reversals of women’s rights in the so-called free world include: reduced funding for reproductive health globally, a stated avowal to reduce or eliminate women’s choice in family planning especially in relation to abortion — witness the repeal of Roe v Wade in the US. 

This erosion of progress is not limited to the US. In 2017, Russia’s parliament, the Duma, voted 380 to three in favour of decriminalising domestic violence in cases where it does not cause “substantial bodily harm” and does not occur more than once a year! 

In 2021, Turkey withdrew from the landmark Istanbul Convention — a groundbreaking and comprehensive framework for combatting gender-based violence and ensuring the rights of survivors in Europe. This decision marks a massive regression for women’s and girls’ human rights in Turkey and has also emboldened anti-rights advocates across several other countries in the region. Poland and Hungary have also seen a reversal of women’s rights. Lobbying by Poland and Hungary has led to the removal of the phrase “gender equality” from an EU statement in 2021. Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice Party (PiS) and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban promote what they call traditional social values.

Some feminists have argued that women have made great progress in the 21st century, and thus they question whether it is necessary to continue the debate on women’s inequality. Compared to previous centuries when women were the property of men and had no rights at all, it is clear that women’s status in many countries has improved juridically. 

However, as this survey has shown even these limited gains have either been reversed or are under attack in many countries with frightening consequences for women. Even where such rights remain it is clear that apart from the right to vote and own property, equality for women as it now exists is based, by an unseen process of co-option, on the successes of a favoured few; for working-class women little has altered. 

In Britain despite the fact that women now account for over half the workforce, job segregation, precarious work and the gender pay gap persist, underpinned by the myth of the “family wage” and compounded by the lack of affordable childcare. 

Austerity politics, having undermined public services, has led to the feminisation of poverty. In the home, up to one in 10 women experience domestic violence each year; one in four will experience this type of abuse at some point in their lifetime. An incident of domestic violence takes place in Britain every six to 20 seconds. 

Socialists have to recognise that patriarchal sexism and misogynistic violence are the tools by which women’s oppression is maintained in class society the world over. The price of retaining let alone extending our rights is eternal vigilance. Our vigilance must be accompanied by resistance.

Mary Davis is author of Women and Class. She and others will be speaking at an International Women’s Day webinar and discussion today, March 8, on The Violence of Misogyny: A Global Apparatus of Oppression from 6-8pm. Join at http://cpb.tiny.us/yt6r4v35.