The United States was officially designated a backsliding democracy in late 2021, when it appeared on a prominent European think tank’s annual global ranking.
Around the same time the U.S. made its debut on the list—still six months before the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, but with Texas’ unconstitutional six-week abortion ban already in effect, rendering abortion care all but inaccessible in the nation’s second most populous state—advocates and journalists raised real-time questions about the correlation between regression on abortion rights and degraded democracies. A New York Times article asserted that such a descent is precisely when “curbs on women’s rights tend to accelerate.”
We think that’s a proposition worth flipping on its head. Rather than clocking the downward spiral from this point forward, we might ask: “Can a country that has never truly addressed women’s equality ever be a thriving democracy? And are democracies that have abysmal records on gender equity destined to falter?” According to the United Nations, the trajectory of “de-democratization” is rarely analyzed initially through the distinct lens of gender equity and there are insufficient efforts to systematically examine the current implications. This installment of Women & Democracy engages this critical conversation. We joined forces with NYU Law’s Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network and Rewire News Group to convene a full-day symposium in New York City on April 14, 2023. We encourage you to watch, listen, read—and learn from the global and national leaders and experts who weighed in with us.
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