Introduction

Feminist activism since 2017 has marked a significant new stage in the evolution of the struggle for women's rights worldwide, launching new movements, but also seeing the continuation (and in some cases success) of longer term struggles. Women's struggles cover many areas and vary within social and cultural contexts, but crucial issues are: political representation; economic justice (better pay and conditions for millions exploited and underpaid, and equal opportunities at work); women's control over their own bodies (including the right to contraception and to abortion on reasonable terms); and prevention of sexual harassment, rape and violence against women. Important struggles are also occurring to resist various forms of social and religious discrimination and coercive control. There has been increased coverage of women's campaigns in mainstream media, and greater responsiveness by prestigious institutions and some governments as well as international organizations. Recent campaigns have also included a major role for social media.

This new wave of activism was signaled by the 21 January 2017 Women's March in Washington in the US to coincide with President Trump's inauguration, when many thousands demonstrated against the sexist culture personified by Trump. Organizers of the March also promoted the hashtag #ADayWithoutAWoman on March 8, 2017 in the US, when many went on strike or demonstrated in other ways to demand women's rights.  The US protest was part of the International Women's Strike on Women's Day, jointly inspired by Polish women, who had successfully demonstrated in their thousands in 2016 to prevent a stricter abortion law, and Argentinian women who in 2016 launched the #NiUnaMenos ('NotOneLess') protests after the murder of a 16-year old girl - protests that spread to Chile, El Salvador, Brazil and other countries. The International Women's Strike (also known as 'Paro International de Mujeres'), coordinated between 30 countries in 2017 and taking place in 50 countries worldwide, has been repeated in 2018 and 2019.  It has antecedents in earlier women's strikes and in the Global Women's Strike launched in 2000. 

Women living in very restrictive regimes have been prevented from demonstrating openly and internet campaigns are closed down. The Chinese government jailed five women who planned to hand out stickers against sexual harassment on public transport on Women's Day 2015. The government bowed to international pressure to release the 'Feminist Five', but has tried systematically to suppress feminist activism since.  However, thousands of women and men signed #MeToo petitions at universities in January 2018, and there is a flourishing feminist network within universities. Public defiance is represented by a woman who worked for state-run TV and is suing a celebrated TV presenter for groping her. 

International bodies have highlighted continuing inequality and the need for action. The UN initiated the #DayoftheGirlChild in 2012 to focus attention on the challenges girls face and to promote their empowerment, and has marked the day on 11 October each year since. Celebrations gained in significance in 2017 and in 2018 world leaders pledged on the day to achieve gender equality by 2030. The Nobel Peace Prize was also awarded in 2018 to draw attention to the brutal and often systematic use of rape as a weapon of war, and to honour the work of the Yazidi human rights activist Naida Murad and the physician and gynaecologist Denis Mukwege from the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Naida Murad was abducted in Iraq by ISIS after an attack on her village, as part of the ISIS campaign to exterminate the Yazidi minority, and kept as a sex slave. After her escape she publicized her experiences and campaigned for other women enduring similar horrors.  Mukwege has devoted himself since 1999 to trying to repair the damage caused by violent rapes perpetrated during the civil war in DRC, and has continued despite death threats. The Nobel Prize reflects the spirit of International Women Human Rights Defenders Day on 29 November, backed by the UN Human Rights Council, which honours women who work for human rights of others, despite misogyny and often at risk of violence or death. It also honours men who campaign for equality.

Protesting against the prevalence of rape, discriminatory treatment of raped women and the responses of the courts has been central to many women's movements worldwide, as has the broader issue of violence against women, from 2017 onwards.The pivotal character of 2017 is largely due to the global development of the #MeToo movement. This hashtag was originally launched in 2006 by the US activist and community organizer Tarana Burke, to provide support for survivors of sexual violence, especially for Black women and girls and other women of colour from poorer communities. The original ‘MeToo’ campaign promotes digital community building and connects survivors to legal advice and other resources, and promotes research.

Evolution of #MeToo 

The pivotal character of 2017 is due as well to the global development of the #MeToo movement. This hashtag was originally launched in 2006 by the US activist and community organizer Tarana Burke, to provide support for survivors of sexual violence, espeically for Black women and girls and other women of colour from poorer communities. The original MeToo campaign promotes digital community building and connects survivors to legal advice and other resources, and promotes research. 

The hashtag became widely known after it was used by US actor Alyssa Milano on 15 October 2017, and  then spread very rapidly as over 70 women made allegations of sexual abuse against Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein. The hashtag was used over 200,000 times by the end of the day andwas tweeter more than 500,000 times the following day. It was also used on Facebook by 4.7 million in 12 million posts during the first 24 hours.

Use of #MeToo has helped to broaden discussion about domestic violence and to make it inclusive of women from all backgrounds.  It has also raised awareness of sexual harassment and violence in  a range of professions, such as the Church, education, politics, the  military, the finance sector and sport, and helped to imrpove media coverage of the incidence of s exual violence and harassment.

The  Hollywood scandal unleashed by #MeToo contributed to the launch on 1 January 2018 of  the #TimesUp Legal Defence Fund, created by Hollywood celebrities to focus on sexual harassment in the workplace. The purpose was to raise money for legal action by those who have limited or no access to the mass media or finance, and to hold companies that tolerate sexual harassment to account. The Fund collected over $20 million and hired over 200 volunteer lawyers in its first year.     

The Me Too campaign has spread to at least 85 countries  (that have coined their own  hashtags). They include Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, Ethiopia, France, Germany,  Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Mongolia and Palestine.  Women in Morocco, for example, demonstrated in November 2018 against sexual .harassment, using #Masaktach to raise awareness and organize forms of protest.  

Me Too has attracted criticism: for example that it risks re-trumatizing women, that fact checking is weak, and that minority women are not properly represented.  Tarana Burke (the originator of the hashtag) has expressed concern that a movement which focuses on survivors of sexual violence could either be seen as a vindictive plot against men, or could risk neglecting survivors who are not in the limelight. However, the campaign has improved media coverage of harassment cases. (See thereport by the Women’s Media Center (WMC): http://www.womensmediacenter.com/assets/site/reports/media-and-metoo-how-a-movement-affected-press-coverage-of-sexual-assault/Media_and_MeToo_Womens_Media_Center_report.pdf).

When five men were acquitted on rape charges in Pamplona, Spain, in April 2018, women demonstrated and created the hashtag Cuentalo ('Tell It'). This protest spread to Latin America, where women came onto the streets to denounce the pervasive gender violence in the region. (The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean estimates that each day 12 Latin American women are murdered) Demonstrations took place in Mexico City in March 2018 to demand justice for women survivors of violence (Mexico is one of the most dangerous places in the world for women). A year earlier at the Miss Peru 2017 beauty contest, participants refused to read out their bust and hip measurements and read out instead statistics about violence of various kinds against women and young girls. 

At the other side of the world, women in Nepal demonstrated in 2018 under the slogan 'RageAgainst Rape', after the rape and murder of a 13 year old girl, protesting against a police culture of victim blaming. In Africa UN Women launched the #HearMeToo-End Violence Against Women campaign in 2011, which has led to further hashtag campaigns, such as #YourVoiceIsPower in Libya and #CountToTen in South Africa, as well as demonstrations and educational initiatives across the continent. Women in Nairobi, Kenya, marked Women's Day in 2019 with a demonstration outside parliament against the rising number of women being killed.

Feminists have also long been challenging the belief that women who are raped may bring it upon themselves by the way they dress. When in November 2018 a jury in Cork, Ireland, acquitted a man accused of raping a 17-year old, because she was wearing a lace front thong that suggested she was willing to have sex, hundreds of women shared photographs of their own underwear on social media with the caption #ThisIsNotConsent; a few women also marched  in underwear to protest.

‘MeToo’ highlighted the prevalence of physical sexual harassment, as well as the widespread promotion of pornographic images of women, and prompted a world-wide response. Women in Brazil in 2018 used the Rio Carnival (where violence against women had  been rife in previous years) to campaign, giving out stickers with slogans such as 'My Breast, My Rules', 'No is No' and 'Grabbing  me won't get you a kiss'. Women in Kenya launched the #MyDressMyChoice campaign against sexual harassment and assault. Similar protests took place in Liberia, South Africa and Nigeria. In India, where a widespread culture of sexual harassment and rape is also prevalent, ‘MeToo’ struck a chord and led to many accusations of harassment in the press, politics and the film industry in 2017-18. On 8 September 2018, four nuns went on hunger strike against a bishop, Franco Mullackal, accused of harassment in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of the Indian state of Kerala. Their protest, which was supported also by some Muslim women, led to bishop Mullackal being deposed after two weeks and put on trial. Women in Mongolia, who had by 2017 already waged a successful four year campaign to make domestic violence a crime, launched a new campaign in 2018 for a law against sexual harassment in the workplace. 

‘MeToo’ also prompted a wave of activism in South Korea, with regular demonstrations in the capital. Issues included opposition to spycam videos of women secretly filmed in public spaces: women marched in August 2018 under the slogan 'I Am Not Your Porn'. Women also began to protest in December 2018 against the very restrictive dress and beauty standards imposed on them - one in three women have had plastic surgery and are criticised for wearing spectacles in public. Demonstrators destroyed make-up and a woman TV presenter wore her glasses. Invasion of personal privacy to produce porn was an issue also taken up in Britain by Gina Martin, who was the victim of a man at a festival who secretly photographed up her skirt and shared the picture with friends. She launched the campaign #StopSkirtingtheIssue, and lobbied for a law against upskirting.  After a Private Member's bill was defeated in the Commons, the government backed legislation covering England and Wales, which was passed early in 2019 (Scotland already had a law against it). 

Political and Economic Developments 

The ‘MeToo’ movement has drawn renewed attention to the long struggles by women round the world to gain political influence and power. Prejudice and harassment may undermine women in politics even after they have established their presence at the top. In Australia two women MPs resigned from the ruling Liberal Party in the Federal parliament in 2018-19, complaining about gender bias and a culture of bullying and intimidation. But the primary struggle is to secure political representation.

Women's presence in national parliaments and in government has generally lagged behind their getting the vote and gaining social and economic freedoms. But it has often also reflected progress in other spheres, as in Scandinavia, where parliamentary representation has tended to be relatively good (for example 44% in Sweden's lower house in 2016). The existence of an active women's movement may also have an impact. For example, Spain got its first female-majority government in June 2018, when 11 women and six men were appointed to the Prime Minister's cabinet: the major demonstration on Women's Day on March 8 is seen as contributing to this result. 

Nevertheless, there is not a straightforward correlation between women's general progress, or women's activism, and their presence at the top of national politics. National contexts vary widely. The astonishing fact that in in 2016 women represented 64% of the lower house of Rwanda's legislature (the highest percentage in the world), but only 19% of the US House of Representatives, reflects special circumstances in both countries. The mobilization of women in both politics and the economy in Rwanda, encouraged by the military head of state Paul Kagame, is a consequence of the appalling genocide of the Tutsi by the Hutu in 1994 and many perpetrators then fleeing the country. As a result, an estimated 60 to 70 per cent of the remaining population was women, who began to play a new role in the economy, despite lack of education and strong social prejudice.

Sometimes women are promoted politically within undemocratic regimes to signal (perhaps token) ideological support for women's rights and add legitimacy. President Bokassa in the Central African Republic, who seized power in a coup in 1972, offered the new post of prime minister in January 1975 to Elisabeth Domitien, who became the first African woman prime minister. She had been active and respected in the independence movement and in public life since independence, so Bokassa sought both to broaden his popular support and to gain internationally by marking UN International Women's Year. Domitien was, however, dismissed by Bokassa in 1976, when she opposed his plan to become emperor. The importance of political dynasties in mobilizing loyalty in some political contexts has also enabled a number of wives or daughters to become prime minister or president. Three well known examples from Asia are: Sri Lanka (Sirima Bandaranaike, who took over when her husband was assassinated in 1960 and became the first woman prime minister in the world); India (Indira Gandhi - Nehru's daughter, elected 1966); and Pakistan (Benazir Bhutto - daughter of Zulfikar Bhutto, elected in 1988). All were strong and able women, but family was their pathway to power. 

But when women do rise to the top of government entirely on their own merits, especially where women in general still suffer widespread forms of discrimination, it is a significant advance. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia became the first elected African woman President in 2006, backed by a major women's peace movement which had arisen out of 14 years of brutal civil war, and held office for 12 years, during which she managed to keep the peace and promote the shattered economy, but did little directly for women (a stringent rape law was introduced, but watered down). Since then a number of women heads of state have been selected in Africa. Ethiopia appointed its first woman President in October 2018. Sahle-Work Zedwe holds a mostly ceremonial post, but she has a high profile from her role at the UN and in peacekeeping in Africa, and her symbolic significance is strengthened by the fact that the Prime Minister also gave half his cabinet posts to women. She has promised to work for Ethiopian women, who have made gains in education, but are still seriously disadvantaged in the economy and by lack of health care. 

The celebration in the UK in 2018 of 100 years since women in principle gained the vote (though they were only enfranchised on the same terms as men in 1928), was an opportunity to honour past struggles, and press for better representation in the future. To mark the anniversary of women also gaining the right to stand for parliament, 209 women MPs from every parliament in the world gathered in a government sponsored conference at Westminster in November 2018 to pledge to fight internationally against gender inequality in politics (women on average make up only 24% of  legislatures). Despite the fact the 2017 general election brought a record number of 208 women MPs into the UK House of Commons (up from 196 in 2015), they are only 32% of the total. Women's difficulty in becoming MPs has been due in part to the electoral system and the dominance of two major parties, with the Labour Party selecting more women candidates in winnable seats. 

Similar electoral and party constraints help to explain the low representation of women in the US Congress. But the recent rise of women's activism in the US led to their playing a prominent role in the 2018 mid-term elections, and the election of a record 102 women to the House of Representatives (89 Democrats and 13 Republicans). Nancy Pelosi was selected the first woman Speaker of the House. Women also won nine governorships of states. In both the UK and the US elections there was also a significant increase in the representation of women from minority communities - including African American, Latina and Native American women in the US. When President Trump inaugurated the new Congress in January 2019, women representatives wore white, the suffragette colour, to celebrate 100 years since Congress passed the 19th Amendment (ratified by states in 1920) giving women in principle the vote. (In practice state control of often restrictive electoral provisions, and entrenched racial discrimination, meant that many women, especially Blacks and Native Americans, were still excluded) January 2019 also saw millions join in the Women's March in Washington (two years after the first); which was estimated to be the largest single-day protest in North American history.     

Women's access to paid employment outside the home is central to their gaining greater independence and social status.  But women have also been vulnerable to exploitation in the work place, both because of prevailing attitudes which have devalued and underpaid 'women's work', and because very often they desperately need their jobs to maintain their children. Even in economically advanced countries women have had to campaign hard for equal pay (and equal pay for equivalent work). Moreover, even when the principle has been recognised in law - as it was in Iceland in 1976 after a historic strike on 24 October 1975, when 90 per cent of women in both paid and unpaid work went on strike until midnight - the reality tends to be different. Icelandic women went on strike again on 24 October 2018, leaving work at 2.55pm, the estimated time their day should end if they were paid the same as men. (Activists in France took up this idea for Women's Day in March 2019 - a work stoppage at 3.40pm to dramatise an average 26% pay gap) Thousands of women in Glasgow (Scotland) also went on strike and demonstrated on 24 October 2018 (to coincide with the Icelandic women) as part of a 12 years campaign for equal pay for low paid council employees such as cleaners and caterers. 

Women often need work even more desperately in poorer parts of the world, but are also even more likely to be underpaid and exploited. Some are fighting back. For example, an eight year struggle by shop workers in Kerala (India), who often worked a 12 hour day with only a 30 minute lunch break and were forced to stand all day - leaning against a wall could lead to a pay cut - finally ended in victory in July 2018. The Kerala state government amended the labour laws to direct employers to introduce an eight hour day and to allow the workers to sit on a chair or stool. Over 50,000 garment workers in Bangladesh, who have fought a long campaign against very long hours and minimal pay, shut down 52 factories and blocked a road near Dhaka in two weeks of protest in January 2019. Nevertheless, the overall position of women in the economy in Bangladesh is getting stronger: the proportion of women in the workforce rose from 4% in 1974 to 36% by 2016 (quite largely due to the rise of the garment industry), and this is having  social repercussions, for example making it easier for some women to consider divorce.

Culture and Sport

Although the spheres of culture and sport are less central to most women's lives, women's presence and treatment in both do have great symbolic significance, and also influence the range of opportunities open to girls and women. Since the ‘MeToo’ campaign took off in 2017 from a scandal about Hollywood, it is not surprising that the role of women in film became an immediate focus of feminist and media attention. At the 70th Cannes Film Festival in 2017 American actress and producer Jessica Chastain protested about the way women were represented in over 20 movies she had watched. The response in 2018 was for the first time to appoint a majority of women to the jury. There was also a protest by 82 women in the film industry; they processed in silence on the red carpet to highlight the lack of female directors in the program. In its 71 years the Festival had shown 82 films directed by women, compared with 1,645 by men. The Oscar Academy Awards ceremony has also sparked controversy about the tendency to exclude films by both women (only five nominated over 91 years) and Black directors - although changes have recently been made to those eligible to vote. In 2019 no women were nominated for best director (the BBC listed five who could have qualified) though in other categories films with female leads were nominated.  

The year 2018 did see significant advances in women's participation in sports previously seen as a male preserve, and also in the proportion of women taking part in world competitions and receiving equal treatment. Twitter launched a new emoji in May 2018 to celebrate the growing influence of women working in the football industry as part of the Women in Football campaign #WhatIf. The World Surf League announced equal pay for men and women from 2019, following on the US body announcing equal pay the previous year - the first sport in the USA to do so. At the Olympic Winter Games in February 2018 in South Korea, over 43 percent of competitors were female, a record number; and at the Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires in October  2019 half  the athletes will be women for the first time ever. There were however controversies in women's tennis which raised questions over equality of judging standards. A well publicized incident occurred when the champion Serena Williams (who had recently had serious health problems after giving birth) was banned from playing at the 2018 French Open when wearing  a suit specially designed to prevent blood clots.

The chance to take part in sport for women in societies tending to segregate women, or to impose strict dress codes, is obviously limited. However, Muslim Morocco hosts the 10km Course Feminine held in Casablanca each year, which allows girls and women of different ages, whether clothed in shorts or in robes and veils, to run or walk the course and to join in a collective event and claim public space.