OPINION: Women’s Rights Are Winning

Around the world, high-profile setbacks have inspired overlooked progress.

By Lyric Thompson, Founder and CEO, Feminist Foreign Policy Collaborative

Originally published in Foreign Policy on October 21, 2025.

A member of the feminist collective “Collera” takes part in a protest against new interim President José Jerí outside the Justice Palace in Lima, Peru, on Oct. 10. Connie France / AFP via Getty Images

Washington, D.C. | You’ve seen the headlines: Genocide. Famine. War. Climate catastrophe. Inflation. The far right ascendant. Democracy in decline. For women in particular, things look particularly grim: Abortion rights have been overturned, with contraception next in the crosshairs; the workforce is hemorrhaging Black women; women still lag in political leadership; and social media influencers encourage young women to throw in the towel and put on an apron, tradwife style.

And it’s not just the United States. In even the most progressive countries, the status of women is in jeopardy. Sweden recently renounced its trademark feminist foreign policy. In Argentina, President Javier Milei came riding into power on a chainsaw, which he first used to cut down the country’s ministry for gender equality and, with it, 100 percent of the country’s support for combating domestic violence and sexual assault. And in the Netherlands, traditionally one of the world’s most generous supporters of women’s rights, a new right-wing government pledged last year to eliminate billions of euros in development funding, including everything earmarked for gender equality programs.

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