Introduction
For at least a decade, a global and organized war has been waged against women’s lives, bodies, minds, creations, labor, and achievements. 2025 was a year in which this war became more visible. Increasing rates of feminicide, restrictions on reproductive and maternal health, the strengthening of fascist ideologies, opposition to gender equality, and the militaristic targeting of women by states and paramilitary organizations have shaped and affected the lives of women around the globe. Such unilateral aggression has also led women to become more active in their search for solidarity and unity.
When we evaluate the current period from the perspective of the idea of a “world women’s democratic confederalism”, we see that despite the difficulties we face, this period also carries important opportunities for us to cooperate as women. The primary reason for this is the rise of women’s consciousness at the global level.
Despite the weaponization of the figure of the “traditional feminine” to recruit support, fascist ideologies still fail to impress young women. Instead, women are quick to join each other in their struggles and speak the same language of women’s liberation as can be seen in numerous protests and campaigns worldwide. Further, due to several genocidal situations unfolding in places such as Palestine, Syria, and Sudan, the relationships between imperialism, racism, patriarchy, and capitalism have been exposed across almost the entire globe more than ever before. Women are highly aware of the system they face and the links between feminicide and genocide. Likewise, the relationship between capitalism and ecological disasters as well as between neoliberalism and the feminization of poverty have become undeniably clear. At the same time, the discourses, actions, and institutions that have promised women equality and freedom until now are collapsing. Therefore, there is an increasing demand from women to create alternative ideologies and new lines of action.
Still, we face many obstacles. The biggest obstacle ahead for the Network Women Weaving the Future to overcome are the geopolitical boundaries that have been set between people and which, at times, obscure the importance of international organizing, instead leading women to become isolated in their own context.
We are still far from our goal of securing a steady information flow between movements across continents and of creating a long-lasting sense of “us” from out of the fragmented landscape of women’s institutions and alliances. Also, the heavy workload that falls on women in local organizing prevents many from connecting beyond national boundaries.
We observe that the idea of a women’s internationalism excites everyone. However, the fact that the content of this internationalism will take shape to the extent to which concrete relationships are established and maintained sometimes causes it to remain somewhat abstract. We are happy that active participation in the Network Women Weaving the Future from other continents is increasing. This will also concretize the short-term plans.
In this essay, we analyze recent dimensions of the world women’s struggle. We believe that to analyze the current state of women’s and feminist/transfeminist movements on the global stage, it is useful to first remember that 2025 marked the 30th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women, an international meeting held in Beijing in 1995. This will enable us to critically evaluate the last thirty years of feminist and women’s struggle and highlight the differences between the past and the present. We will then address the most important issues women are fighting for today, as represented in the public sphere.
From 1995 to 2025
First, let us quote the summary on the United Nations website regarding the Beijing meeting held in 1995, which went down in history as the largest gathering of women:
A landmark conference on women
The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China was the most important of the four conferences on women held between 1975-1995, because it built on political agreements that had been reached at the three previous global conferences on women, and it consolidated five decades of legal advances aimed at securing the equality of women with men in law and in practice. More than 17,000 participants attended the conference, including 6,000 government delegates at the negotiations, more than 4,000 accredited NGO representatives, a host of international civil servants and around 4,000 media representatives. A parallel NGO Forum held in Huairou near Beijing also drew some 30,000 participants.
The conference marked a significant turning point for the global agenda for gender equality. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action https://docs.un.org/en/A/CONF.177/20/Rev.1, adopted unanimously by 189 countries, was an agenda for women’s empowerment that is now considered the key global policy document on gender equality. It set strategic objectives and actions for the advancement of women and the achievement of gender equality in 12 critical areas of concern:
Women and Poverty; Education and training of women; Women and health ; Violence against women; Women and armed conflict; Women and the economy Women in power and decision-making; Institutional mechanism for the advancement of women; Human rights of women; Women and the media; Women and the environment; The girl-child.
The four world conferences on women convened by the United Nations in the last quarter of the twentieth century were instrumental in bringing the cause of gender equality to the center of the global agenda. The conferences united the international community behind a set of common objectives, with an effective plan of action for the advancement of women everywhere.
The UN Division for Women, in its review of the four World Conferences, stated "The fundamental transformation that took place in Beijing was the recognition of the need to shift the focus from women to the concept of gender, recognizing that the entire structure of society, and all relations between men and women within it, had to be re-evaluated. Only by such a fundamental restructuring of society and its institutions could women be fully empowered to take their rightful place as equal partners with men in all aspects of life. This change represented a strong reaffirmation that women's rights were human rights and that gender equality was an issue of universal concern, benefiting all."
After Beijing
We can safely say that the Beijing conference, whose thirtieth anniversary has been commemorated in various ways and places in the past year, had truly significant consequences for women. It would be incorrect to consider the common consciousness, language, and roadmap for action that women have developed over the last thirty years regarding patriarchy independently of this meeting and the processes that developed afterwards.
On the other hand, it is also an undeniable fact that the path charted by this meeting also delegitimized certain subjects, discourses, and forms of action. Although the meeting took place with the large participation of women from the southern hemisphere, it united all women under the same goals to align them with liberal ideals of northern women. The discourse of gender equality was formalized at this meeting and a framework defined in terms of “rights” replaced the discourse on freedom. Similarly, gender equality was defined as a national economic benefit and goal for development (in terms of creating an educated, productive, liberal society and ensuring the compatibility of this society with neoliberal capitalism) rather than an intrinsic part of the struggle for human freedom.
The phrase “Women’s Rights are Human Rights,” which Hillary Clinton, as participant in the Beijing Conference, sloganized in her speech can be considered a summary of this development. This phrase spread and established the idea that, from now on, any criticism of the system from the perspective of women should take place within the discourse of human rights and the limits of the global regime it conjures. Thus, both the possibilities and the limits of feminism and women’s struggles were defined.
Today, “women’s rights are human rights discourse” is in strain both because of global fascism that denies its value and because criticisms against it is being brought up by different freedom movements that feel that their desires and histories have been sidelined and denormalized by the limits imposed on them by this discourse. When it comes to women, these criticisms argue that the human rights discourse has caused feminist and women’s struggles to focus on only a few areas, rendering other struggles invisible and illegitimate. They conclude that the women’s struggle has in general shifted from envisioning different systems of life to empowering women within the system.
Following the Beijing meeting, feminist and other struggles concentrated on the legal sphere to eliminate gender inequality and ensure that the state takes an active role in protecting and empowering women. Indeed, 1,531 laws directly affecting gender equality have been passed worldwide since Beijing. These laws include preventing discrimination in the workplace (equal pay for equal work, prevention of sexual harassment in the workplace, etc.), increasing women’s representation in political life (mainly through quotas), and opening up the so-called “private” sphere to public control to protect women from violence and discrimination (laws on domestic violence, regulations prohibiting female genital mutilation and child marriage). For states, including women into social assistance networks has become the most important way to tackle poverty. In parallel, NGOs have provided services to empower women through international funds and aid. These include education and support for awareness and pursuit of rights, access to education and health (especially reproductive and maternal health), and combating poverty (vocational training support and microcredits) and violence (hotlines, shelters, etc.). Meanwhile, feminists and women leaders have primarily focused on transforming state institutions and became recruited by NGOs as professionals and experts.
The 2000 United Nations Resolution 1325 is also significant, and its roots lie in the Beijing conference. Resolution 1325, demands that states ensure that women play an equal role in building peace in post-conflict societies and focus on empowering girls and women who are victims of war. Policies in line with this resolution have been implemented in around 100 countries. It is generally possible to say that these policies have yielded positive results. Resolution 1325 opened an important field of action for women across all continents.
As mentioned above, since this year marks the 30th anniversary of the Beijing conference, developments over the past thirty years have been subject of both praise and some radical criticism. We should also note that these criticisms are voiced in a context where the domination of western countries in international institutions and the weakness of these institutions to enforce their basic principles have become most visible.
Criticisms from Within the System
Criticisms from within the system generally develop alongside the observation that the current situation represents progress compared to 30 years ago. This progress is measured based on the number of laws passed that address gender equality, access to health and education, increased representation of women in politics, higher participation of women in the workforce, and gains in equal pay for equal work. Other developments include the rise of women’s awareness and the establishment of institutions that keep the issue of gender equality on the global agenda.
On the other hand, observers note that the progress made still falls far short of the gender equality agenda set by the United Nations and accepted by governments. Moreover, there has been a global regression on all these issues in recent years. Restrictions in abortion and LGBTQI+ rights in North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe; increasing pressures for family formation and marriage; population policies that push women to bear children (especially in East Asia), and the repeal or debate of laws on female genital mutilation and child marriage are frequently cited examples for this regression.
Another regression that observers have been keen on emphasizing in 2025 occurred in regard to the levels of finance and funding of gender equality projects. Many organizations note that significant restrictions of humanitarian funds, first through changes in USAID and later through European budget cuts, have been a disaster for women in the Global South and poor women, particularly in terms of access to healthcare. The closure of maternal and child health clinics all over the southern hemisphere due to lack of funding, caused great harm to both the women working in this field and the women who depended on these services. While maternal mortality rates rose rapidly from Afghanistan to Mali, the system established to prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to child in the African continent collapsed. There is even talk of a new HIV crisis looming. Similarly, new taxes imposed by the US caused women, who are heavily employed in import sectors (such as textile), to lose their jobs in many countries such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Only some countries with strong union organizations were able to resist this.
Another field where regression has been most prominently felt is war and violence against women. The damage caused to women by the intensifying conflicts in the context of what we call the “Third World War” is well documented. In the MENA region only, 62% of women live in zones of conflict and at least 11,7 million women are internally displaced. More importantly, most contemporary wars are waged on women’s bodies as has been documented in Ethiopia, Myanmar, Sudan, Congo, Yemen and Syria.
The biggest impasse here is not only the reluctance of warring states to identify and punish those responsible for military action and sexual violence against women during war, but also the fact that perpetrators in new forms of warfare do not have a recognized legal personality. For example, in Sudan, Myanmar, and Haiti, where sexual violence against women is said to be most prevalent, the perpetrators are paramilitary structures that have no official recognition, have no accountability or legal responsibility. Here, as in the Sudan example, it is possible to propose putting pressure on countries such as the United Arab Emirates, which supports paramilitary groups in other countries, or Rwanda, as in Congo, but no results are achieved. Moreover, in an increasingly scandalous manner, cases of sexual harassment and rape by so-called peacekeeping soldiers are coming to light, such as those sent to Haiti from Kenya, US soldiers at bases in the Philippines, or in various countries where UN forces are stationed. Since these soldiers come from different countries, their identities cannot be determined, and the promise that nation-states will prosecute their own soldiers and establish their own courts are again situations that prevent accountability.
In short, while Resolution 1325 was adapted to implement gender equality in post-conflict, international and state organizations are failing to protect women in a world order where armed conflict is increasingly becoming the norm.
Finally, another area of concern for international institutions and NGOs has emerged this year. That is digital inequalities and digital harassment, which sometimes has real-life consequences. It is said that inequality in digital literacy (for example, women’s much lower rate of use of artificial intelligence compared to men) prevents women from integrating into new market forms and participating in new professions. Projects that empower women in this regard are being encouraged. For example, European Union funds are seeking to create work in this area.
At the same time, harassment against women has reached enormous proportions in the digital sphere. Men reinforcing misogyny in virtual spaces (s0-called “manospheres”) and using these for encouragement to attack women is a particularly significant problem for female journalists and politicians. It is believed that men socializing in these spaces are also encouraged to commit feminicides. In short, the system can be said to have been caught unprepared regarding the impact of new technologies on gender inequality, which has become an area where open attacks against women is widespread.
Radical Criticisms
Radical criticisms generally view the human rights regime and, more specifically, the slogan “women’s rights are human rights” as a framework, a superstructure of the neoliberal order. This is a rather lengthy topic, so we will not dwell on it here. However, in short, the criticisms, which argue that “rights discourse” itself inhibits freedom can be grouped under the following three headings:
1) The excessive emphasis on rights violations, violence, and protection has led to the production of security-oriented policies in all areas.
2) Groups demanding rights and speaking the language of rights became integrated into the system (for example, LGBTQI+ people demanding the right to marry or women entering the labor market). As different groups entered through the door that was opened by normalization and as some of their radical differences from the norm became visible, the discourse of granting rights gave way to organized reactions and renewed prohibitions. In other words, the rights regime included “harmless”, conformist individuals who functioned within the system, while excluding those who did not more violently. When those who did not conform took advantage of the opportunities offered by the “open door”, the liberal momentum reversed into a fascist one.
3) Projects that aimed at alleviating poverty, increasing access to education and fighting poverty have created docile subjects suitable for the current neoliberal market obscuring the deep connections between capitalism and patriarchy.
4) The links between political liberation, social struggle, and women’s struggle were severed by divorcing “women’s empowerment” from social and political freedom of collectivities.
To summarize, these critiques point to how the global security regime was legitimized under the guise of “protecting women from violations,” how inclusion of difference often reproduced the distinctions between “acceptable” (wealthy, consuming, self-confident urban women, etc.) and “unacceptable” (women who are racialized, poor, are unemployed, or have “committed crimes”) women, and established the “human” part of “human rights” in an exclusionary manner. Finally, the freedom to envision a different future society was reduced to the right of choice of “individuals” who are compliant and fit for the neoliberal market.
Unfortunately, it can be said that some feminisms have fallen into these traps over the last thirty years. Especially as feminism became popularized, some of such traits of the human rights discourse became accepted without much questioning. However, it must be reiterated that popularized feminism has also provided women in many countries with a common language, a path to politicization, and energy for activism. From Bangladesh to Kenya, Nepal to Brazil, Morocco to South Korea, it is possible to see how popular feminism was one factor that led to the participation of women in many uprisings.
The Global Fascist Regime or Fascist International
Some actors in media and international works refer to the current global regime we are living under as the “Reactionary International” or, the “Fascist International.” This concept is quite useful for understanding today’s world and complements the concept of the “Third World War”, which we often use in our documents.
These concepts point out that liberal internationalism, which had been established under the leadership of imperialist states after the econd World War, has now been transformed into an internationally coordinated fascism, again under the leadership of these states. As such, we must see the forces we face as women not as separate fascist actors, but as part of a highly organized and interconnected fascist global regime. Hence, the response to fascism cannot remain local but must be coordinated internationally. The fact that liberal internationalism gave way to a fascist (reactionary) international without much resistance must alert us that the fight against fascism cannot be ideologically and organizationally nourished from within the liberal order, but must feed from other ideological traditions (communist, anarchist, confederalist, decolonial, abolitionist, etc.).
We already know that there are connections between oligarchs, dictators, techno-feudal rich people, from Elon Musk to Donald J. Trump, the Erdoğan family, the Modis, the mafia, and so on. However, fascism’s international organization does not stop there; it includes everyday networks that inevitably serve the same fascist order and are linked both locally and globally. When it comes to gender, for example, it is well-documented how laws banning abortion or punishing LGBTQI+ people are passed in many countries simultaneously and how the lobbyists of such policies are linked to organizations like the American Evangelical Church.
It is also important to note that widely documented abortion bans entered many southern countries under Western colonization. Similarly, traditions that tolerated and normalized same-sex relations were dismantled only after Western colonialism. However, consent for prohibitionist politics today is gained among the people through discourses such as “tradition” and/or, national and regional identity. In reality, behind prohibitions often lie networks and funds coming from the West.
In Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, western originated religious organizations fund and train conservative lobbies or NGOs and exert influence over draft legislations. Locally established virtual rooms are supported globally by techno-feudalists spreading misogyny. At the same time, those who speak in these rooms effectively, might become conservative influencers, whose words are listened to by the public. Very recently, a man who was associated with Elon Musk in these virtual rooms and who also spoke in the Uruguayan parliament on behalf of an anti-abortion group murdered his ex-wife and mother-in-law, who lived in Argentina.
There are many other examples of fascist (reactionary) internationalism. For instance, Colombian paramilitaries are financed by the United Arab Emirates and fight in Sudan, exerting sexual violence over women in both Sudan and Colombia. Deals are made with companies in Kenya that recruit women to be sent to Russia under the pretext of work, forcing them into terrible conditions in the war industry. There are many examples of successful investigative journalism that expose these relationships, and women journalists who do such news are often targeted on social media.
International work and collaboration are essential to reveal such connections. It is also important to show that these connections flow from both the US-Europe and Russia-China axes, and to emphasize how these supposedly separate blocs collaborate when it comes to fascist internationalism. This better reveals how the Third World War is being waged against society and women. It also shows that internationalism must confront not only American imperialism but also other regional hegemonies.
In the next section, we will focus on several, most visible fronts of the war against women in 2025.
Women’s Issues and Areas of Struggle
The struggle against violence against women is the area where feminists and women are most organized internationally. This year, there were significant street protests against feminicide around the globe. Due to the brutal and excessive nature of violence against women, the issue was recognized as a national priority in Brazil, South Africa and Kenya. Further while the numbers of feminicide increased almost everywhere, what has been particularly shocking in many cases was the brutal nature of the murders, including torture and mutilation of bodies. One important development in recent years has been that women from Europe have also joined the fight in greater numbers. From Central Europe to the Balkans, they have become increasingly visible on the streets against violence. Further, Italy recognized feminicide as a special crime targeting women.
Women, who take to the streets to protest feminicide, often call for accountability and governmental responses to the severity of the situation. However, despite organized and increased awareness and reaction against feminicide, its numbers are not decreasing. In addition, such street protests often erupt and become widely attended when a particular case of feminicide or sexual violence takes a spectacular form or targets an unexpected person. A feminicide on a student happened in a hospital in India in 2024, leading to months-longs protests. However, figures show that while Dalit women in India or indigenous women in the U.S. and Canada are overwhelmingly more frequently targeted, their cases are mostly responded to with silence.
Abolitionist Feminism
Emphasizing the inadequacy of the kinds of feminism that demand more punishment for perpetrators, abolitionist feminism takes a different approach to violence against women. In 2025, abolitionist feminism received significant attention by women as they failed to encounter efficiently the increase in violence against women across societies.
The abolitionist movement has been initiated mainly by Black women and spread quickly, leading to a growing global movement of women organizing against prisons, and tougher laws, and against policies equated with “carceral feminism” that demands more laws, more punishment and more security. Abolitionist feminism, in opposition, advocates transformative justice rather than punitive justice.
According to abolitionist feminists, punitive politics are security-focused, strengthen the police and the state, and provoke intervention against minorities and marginalized groups. Research in the US, Brazil and Europe show for example, that Black, immigrant, and poor men are more likely to be prosecuted for crimes such as assault and harassment against women and for drug-related offenses. In such cases, residents of poor neighborhoods are terrorized as a whole, and young men from these neighborhoods are perceived as threats. The abolitionist movement addresses many issues, from the prison industry that emerged in the US to how “clean society” operations under the presidencies of Duterte (Philippines), Lula (Brazil), and Bukele (El Salvador) led to the extrajudicial execution of men in neighborhoods. Abolitionist feminism argues that while such operations and incarceration in general weaken collectivities, what will decrease violence against women is the strengthening of collectivities, through democracy, autonomy, education and collective action.
Abolitionist feminists have a very broad tradition stemming from Black intellectual history and the struggle of Black people. We cannot do justice to the full history here. They aim to abolish all carceral institutions and national borders that are geared toward capture and punishment, arguing that capture and punishment are the founding elements of racism and colonialism in capitalist modernity. In the short term however, abolitionist feminists focus on producing alternative justice systems to punishment and incarceration. The most important of these systems is the idea of ‘transformative justice’. Transformative justice prioritizes strengthening social relations, serving as a tool for social transformation and preventing male violence without resorting to court. This approach views the war waged against women as part of societal genocide. It aims to return the conflict between men and women to its proper place—society. It believes that this will lay the groundwork for a lasting social and moral transformation. This form of struggle, emerging from oppressed communities, particularly Black communities, offers an alternative to both the liberal discourse that seeks to frame feminicide as another legal issue and to carceral feminism that adopts a security-oriented approach by calling on the state and its institutions. In 2025, the international network https://www.interruptingcriminalization.com published very important materials to use for those who are interested in applying transformative justice methods.
Community-based approaches
In the last decade, women movements that advocate the neighborhood, the commune and the community, and locate women as embedded in their environments have become more visible. Such movements do not always call themselves feminist, and they engage society and politics on the local level rather than the national. They are often concerned primarily with healing and recovery. An example would be elderly women in South Africa sitting and listening to young women’s problems and proposing solutions in the face of a lack of other forms of mental health delivery. Another example would be women in Rwanda, who have undergone trauma treatment, helping women in Tigray who have been raped in war. The establishment of women’s networks in South Asia that go door to door on bicycles and provide health services to women with very little education and money would be a further example. All of these are examples involve a move from “institutionalization” to “communization” in feminist and women’s movement’s discourse and praxis.
2. War
In 2025, the Third World War that shapes our current age has intensified. We want to highlight three points relevant for women in the context of war.
There are also many women who were once guerrillas. Their situation is quite difficult today; they live facing exclusion, persecution, and poverty. In short, women guerrillas are an important cornerstone of the history of women’s freedom in southern countries. It is important to focus on this issue as well, when we talk about the topic of women and war.
3. Ecology
Another vital issue that has made its mark on women in last years has been ecological destruction. The struggle of indigenous peoples in Latin America on this issue is well known. In this struggle, it is frequently women who become the leaders and thereby targets of attacks by states, multinational corporations, paramilitary organizations and small-scale capital and landowners, who have become part of the global economy at the local level. This year, the International Climate Change Conference was held in Brazil, where indigenous people and their land are systematically destroyed. Due to the lack of indigenous voices in the conference, indigenous groups collectively arrived at the conference by a boat as a protest. It should also be added that the struggle indigenous groups lead against ecological destruction is not only one on the material level but also at the spiritual level. Decolonialism and extractivism (which can be translated as the destruction and theft of land, culture, and bodies through mining) are only some of the concepts that these movements have introduced to the world and that are becoming increasingly used to refer to similar situations across continents.
Outside of Latin America, some of the largest indigenous ecological movements can be found in Asia, notably in the Philippines, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Leaders in the Philippines are facing major attacks. There is also an increasing talk of human-animal conflict in Asia and in Africa. This conflict, resulting from the overlap of the living spaces of elephants and monkeys with those of humans, causes both human and animal deaths, amounting to extinction for the latter.
Another important issue that has come to the fore with the war in Congo is so-called “green energy” and the fact that energy types that are supposed to reduce carbon emissions worldwide are also based on mining. For example, mining around lithium is displacing people in countries with fragile economies, forcing them into slave labor, and creating areas of conflict and sacrifice. As such, increasingly, the talk about alternative energies is coming under scrutiny.
Another point that needs to be emphasized in this context is that struggles against ecological destruction across continents often lead movements to become radicalized. Although some of these movements start within a liberal framework, as they come into conflict with the state and capital, they shift to politics of autonomy and anti-capitalism. The issue of ecological struggle also revives anti-imperialist discourse because many forms of destruction are carried out through international companies and with the support of global powers.
Ecological struggle is also radically changing human rights discourse. In some Latin American countries, struggles have pioneered the passing of laws on the rights of rivers, for example. In this case, representatives of the indigenous peoples living near the river are appointed as guardians of the river, and dams, roads, etc. cannot be built there. This year, a case spearheaded by young people from Pacific countries was heard at the International Court of Justice. The case evolved around the rights of the ocean and how oceans should be guarded. The case concluded that the failure of nation states to combat climate change constitutes a violation of rights.
Studies show that climate change affects women more than men. As we will discuss in the section on poverty, the feminization of agriculture is a significant factor in this. This also means that women are the ones who most creatively protect nature and lead the way in adapting farming to new conditions. Climate change and the disasters that come with it also affect women the most, putting maternal and child health at risk and increasing domestic violence.
The women’s news site Fuller Project recently conducted an excellent study on the relationship between gendered labor and climate change. By following the textile industry, they deciphered the relationship between women and climate change. The research begins in the cotton fields of India. Here, families work together as seasonal laborers. There is enormous pressure because the harvest seasons are getting shorter. To avoid losing work days, women undergo hysterectomies so that their productivity does not decrease due to menstrual cramps or pregnancy. Another report comes from textile workshops in Cambodia and documents how women’s exploitation increases and their health deteriorates due to the hot weather and floods in the region. Finally, the journalists visit second-hand clothing markets in Kenya. These markets are predominantly run by women. However, due to the heat, the shops can only stay open for a short time causing great financial loss for the communities.
4. Poverty
The feminization of poverty has been a topic of discussion since the 1990s. The feminization of poverty occurs for many reasons. First, women are employed in low-paid jobs or flexible work. Secondly, most of the poor are women living alone with their children, receiving no child support. There are many reasons why there is no father in these families: fathers may be involved in gambling, alcohol, or nightlife; they may have joined gangs, migrated, died in war, been imprisoned, or be polygamous. In these homes, mothers are largely dependent on elderly women for childcare. A third reason is that the workforce in agriculture is becoming feminized. These women are most affected by any kind of policy change, disaster, or conflict. Further, they have often no organization as the daily chores prevent them from political work.
On the other hand, there are also some examples where, by building cooperatives, women have generated collective economic power and thereby also challenged the patriarchal conditions structuring their lives. For example, in Uganda, there are coffee cooperatives that only buy coffee from women. From India to Nigeria, companies where only women taxi drivers are employed are becoming common place. Women that form mussel cooperatives in the Pacific as a response to the decline in fish stocks are another example.
There are three further implications of the feminization of poverty that have become visible in recent years where organizing has become crucial.
1) Feminization of migration: Until recently, it was usually men who used to migrate first and women would follow. However, migration has become also feminized as more and more women migrate to other countries. The increased number of women dying in the Mediterranean is one proof of this. There are many networks that exploit this, as has been reported in relation to the female migration from Africa to Russia and Gulf counties. Whereas those who end up in Russia are forced to work in arms factories, those employed in Gulf countries live under conditions equivalent to slavery since the employer holds the passport and is judicially granted the right to control women’s mobility.
When we talk about racism, we usually refer to racism in Europe, but as migration increases to many Third World countries, horrific racism is also occurring there. Pakistan is deporting and imprisoning Afghan women, Latin America is deporting Haitian women, and South Africa is deporting all other African women. In Asian countries, there have been attacks on camps for Myanmar refugees, etc.
2) Feminization of prisons: In 2025, for the first time in history, the rate of increase in the number of women in prisons exceeded the rate of increase in the number of men in prisons. This is due to several factors. First, poverty leads women to participate in illegalized economies such as sex work and drug trade. In the latter, women are the first to be arrested since they are positioned in the lowest ranks of criminal networks. Second, the attack against women’s reproductive rights by right-wing governments led to the criminalization of many women. A recent study, for example, reported that in the US, even those who searched for the word “abortion” on the internet in southern states were detained this year.
Imprisonment of women often affect entire families if women are the sole breadwinners of the household. Considering this, a law passed in Colombia this year is designed to facilitate the release of women from prison if the woman is the household head. However, feminists report that the law is not yet effectively applied and may women fail to access the right to be released to do lack of information or bureaucracy.
3) Fascism and poverty: Many fascist regimes around the world are winning votes by promising poverty relief to women. Most recently, in local elections in India, every party promised money to women increasing both the numbers of women voters and their supporters.
As an alternative to the individuation process of poverty relief, many women are struggling to create collective economies. Pilot projects institutionalizing citizen’s income that every adult in the population can access, providing school lunches for children, and organizing communal kitchens are some ways in which alternatives are imagined. The latter, in particular, is an empowering form of action organized by women everywhere from Europe to Asia.
5. Women Leaders in Popular Movements
In almost all street protests since 2010, women’s participation and leadership played a very important role. Most recently, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Indonesia have been the scenes of protests. Unfortunately, however, as we know from the case of the Middle East, when interim governments are formed after uprisings, women are never included.
Bangladesh is an important example. Women’s participation in the protests was high and among them university students were the majority. The students found representation in the interim government only through men. Also, students formed their own party but gave very few positions to women. On the other hand, the interim government presented a common civil code bill that would benefit women. Muslim men, organized around religion, staged street protests, and for now, the law is once again on hold.
6. Population Policies
One final issue to conclude this report with is the silent way in which women are refusing to bear children and thereby challenging the population politics of nation-states. This year almost all countries in East Asia have reported declining birth rates. Studies show that despite incentives given by the state, women are refusing to give birth to children due to financial difficulties, patriarchal arrangements, and anxiety over climate change. South Korea is at the forefront in this. South Korean women have formed a widespread movement under the manifesto We Will Not Marry, We Will Not Date Men, We Will Not Have Sex, and We Will Not Give Birth.
Conclusion
It is possible to say that the most significant transformation we are witnessing n this decade is a decline in all feminist movements that do not link their own issues to other social and political issues. One can also argue that the central locus of feminist and women’s movements shifted from the northern to the southern hemisphere, where the links between women’s liberation and social and political liberation are becoming apparent. Many movements develop vocabularies that link sexual violence in war to the issue of peace, ecological destruction and poverty to the issue of anti-capitalism, the reclaiming of rights to the issue of anti-fascism, and violence against women to the fight against genocide.
For the Network Women Weaving the Future, these developments point to a very important ideological and organizational opportunity. Our greatest challenge remains to advance the necessity of organizing together with local women especially those that live in the intersection of the violence of capital, patriarchy and nation-state.
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