The War on Democracy Begins With the War on Women

Author: Sarah Kane

March 27, 2026

Note: This interview was conducted for an assignment for Women, War, and Peace, a class taught by Dr. Shirley Graham at George Washington University.

Marching in New York City for gender equality. [Image credit: UN Women/J Carrier]

The global trends of democratic backsliding and anti-gender equality backlash are like a Venn diagram; these complex movements are not always one and the same, but there is a lot of overlap. It’s this overlap between the two that both interests and alarms me. As democratic backsliding expands and deepens, I expect that overlapping space to grow as well.

To better understand this intersection between democratic backsliding and gender equality backlash, I spoke with Saskia Brechenmacher, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program. Saskia’s focus areas are gender, civil society, and governance. In 2024, she co-authored Aiding Empowerment: Democracy Promotion and Gender Equality in Politics. We discussed the organized efforts behind the backlash against gender equality, the consequences of its success, and how feminist activists can fight back. 

Breaking down the different elements of this movement and the responses to it helps elucidate why gender is a useful flashpoint for grievances with national and international liberal progressive developments and ideologies. In part because, as Saskia puts it, there is almost always entrenched resistance to progression in women’s rights, they become an entry point to attack core liberal values of equality in human rights. Organizers know that they can exploit men’s perceived sense of loss of status when more women are educated, enter the workforce, and become leaders in civil society, the private sector, and the government. It’s not random, it's an informed strategy. To that end, it’s clear we need to do a better job emphasizing this connection. Not only are democracy and human rights inextricably linked with gender equality, but repression of women’s rights and the reassertion of the patriarchal hierarchy are applied and expanded to attacks on democratic institutions and broader human rights. 

A common theme of the transnational anti-gender equality movement that Saskia and I discussed is the link to religion, especially right-wing US-based Christian groups. This connection also exists for anti-LGBTQ rights movements. These groups are the source of massive amounts of funding that feminist groups just can’t keep up with. Religion is used to claim that heteronormative, patriarchal social systems are natural and the only acceptable way to live. Despite the use of religion in a highly politicized way, its personal nature can also be used to claim this is a solely bottom-up, rather than top-down, movement, thus further asserting legitimacy. 

Saskia made three key points that I found particularly striking during our interview. First, she pointed out the importance of turning our focus from the anti-gender equality movement’s messages — which aim to create a false sense of consensus — to the leaders and their motivations. Understanding and exposing who they are and where their funding comes from would be very powerful as an organizing tool for feminists, especially considering the potentially significant links to the broader issue of dark money and networks in US politics. 

Saskia also highlighted that much of the anti-gender equality movement’s playbook actually comes from the tools feminist activists have used for decades. Given the progress of this movement, as well as how distinct it is from previous periods of backlash, there is a sense that these actors have cracked the code in some way. There are certainly strategic and tactical differences, but in reality, the anti-feminist movement has benefited from the tools developed by feminist activists around the world. 

If anti-feminist organizers are utilizing the same tools as feminists, what explains their explosion in success over the last decade? Saskia points out that their use of narratives has been especially effective. It doesn’t matter if your argument is scientifically correct or more logically sound; if the other side has a more compelling narrative, you will lose the political and rhetorical battle. This can be a really difficult concept to grasp, but it speaks to how the anti-gender equality movement can garner broad support for issues, like transgender rights, that actually have very little to do with the general public’s more pressing political concerns. This is also a key part of the authoritarian playbook, as it can help create a big tent of support, uniting camps that don’t fully align ideologically based on a common enemy. Harnessing narratives in a more strategic and targeted way is crucial for pushing back against resistance to women’s rights and getting wins on the national and international stage, given the changing geopolitical context. 

Ending the discussion on a more hopeful note was important for me. In so many conversations today, it always comes back to doom and gloom about politics and human rights. It’s often hard for me not to be hopeless. But hopelessness begets apathy, which is something we can’t risk at this pivotal moment. Saskia’s keys for the future are to celebrate wins, learn from other activists, and engage in solidarity. We should be positive about global gender equality campaigns. Despite the challenges, there are women organizing and even making progress in places much more repressive than the US. To move forward and mitigate the harms to women's rights associated with democratic backsliding, we need to work together and honor those successes and perseverance. 

This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Sarah Kane (SK): The world is facing democratic backsliding and growing institutional backlash against women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. How would you characterize the relationship between these two trends?

Saskia Brechenmacher (SB): I think they're separate but overlapping. Looking globally, you see different patterns of democratic backsliding. You see democratic erosion like in the U.S. where it's an advanced, consolidated democracy, but elected leaders are eroding democratic institutions after coming to power. Then we see democratic erosion in a wider range of cases where democracy was maybe more weakly consolidated, institutions were always weaker, and power always remained concentrated in the executive. Then also there's some autocracies where there had been some liberalization that have now gone in the reverse direction. China is a good example.

In some places, we're seeing an overlap with a backlash against progressive gender norms. I see that as most pronounced in places where leaders have come to power that have embraced a right-wing populist style of government. In some places, it's being driven by societal actors, whether that's religious actors or conservative/ultra conservative organizations. 

SK: You’ve written about how this wave of backlash is more organized than previous opposition movements to changes in gender norms. How interconnected would you say the anti-feminist backlash movement is in terms of strategy, playbook, tactics, etc.?

SB: There's always been entrenched resistance to gender quality change because patriarchal norms and systems are super embedded in most societies. The current phenomenon is a little bit different, and I would separate out two things. One, it is a more structural, systemic development, where, as women have made major advances over the past few decades, that creates a fertile ground for resistance to that trend. 

There are organized forces connecting across borders to push back against what they see as problematic developments in the law and culture going back to the 60s and 70s. In Europe, the US, and Latin America, you have actors that were never really happy with certain developments, like the mass availability of birth control, the legalization of abortion, and advances in LGBTQ rights. The religious right in the U.S. are funding similar groups in Europe and connecting with churches and religious networks in Latin America and in Africa. You also see connections in terms of actual annual meetings where people are getting together and sharing broadly the same ideological outlook on gender issues and fertility issues. You also see pretty explicit copying of language and tactics. That's not the driver everywhere. For example, if you look at what's happening in Japan or South Korea or China, it's mostly happening because of internal domestic reasons.

SK: This movement has attacked gender equality both on a national and international level. What do you see as the short- and long-term consequences for initiatives that are now being whittled down or attacked, like the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda?

SB: If you look globally, there's still a long way to go to actually reach gender equality. Yes, there's been progress, but there's so much regional disparity. So, when you're rolling back some of those mechanisms and norms, there's a huge concern that this will lead to really concrete harms for women and girls around the world, whether that's about access to decision-making, protection from violence, reproductive healthcare, maternal mortality, just very basic things.

At the more abstract level, this is not just an attack on gender equality. Anything to do with inclusion, equality, egalitarianism, diversity, those sort of core liberal democratic values, that's really also the target. If we look at any particular country and trace the way these attacks evolve, we can see how there's a normalization of violence and hierarchy that happens in the gender realm that then expands to other parts of society. At the international level, it's also about reaffirming norms of national sovereignty and rejecting universal rights.

But if you look at public opinion data, overwhelmingly, people are pretty supportive of gender equality. So, it’s important to shift the focus to the actors who are fomenting this. Why are they fomenting it? What purpose is it serving? How are they doing it? I think the role of technology is a really essential one. How is the digital realm being instrumentalized to get certain narratives out there and make them seem more universal than they may actually be in the population? 

SK: The political response to this movement strikes me as rather reactive rather than proactive. Is this an accurate assessment? If so, what impact has this reactivity had on responsiveness to backsliding?

SB: I do think there's been some reactiveness. I think people were caught a bit off guard, thought things were widely accepted, no longer politicized, no longer up for discussion, and it turns out they are now politicized again, and you have to actively defend them. Making that switch takes a bit of time. 

I think part of it is strategic confusion. So even once you recognize the extent of the problem, you're not sure how to fight against it or what the best tools and strategies are. 

In some places, it's also a weak commitment to those norms. Gender equality is not the only thing that's under attack at this current moment. There’s this sense that because there are so many hard security crises, we need to focus on essentials, and then “nice to haves” fall away because no one's willing to put their political capital into those issues.

SK: Many of the tactics gender equality activists relied on for decades no longer work in the changing context of democratic backsliding. Are there ways that gender and LGBTQ equality activists and organizations can learn from the most successful tactics of the anti-gender playbook? 

SB: First, I would say that the anti-gender movement has really learned from the feminist movement. The biggest tactics that they're using, like transnational convenings, lobbying, strategic litigation, training of politicians and MPs, these are all strategies that the women's movement has been using for a long time.

That being said, a couple things may be worth copying from them. One is really focusing on narratives. For example, gender ideology has been such an effective organizing tool because it's so vague that it can be used to make everything sound crazy and radically threatening. Obviously, you don't want to necessarily copy that, but what it has driven home is that sometimes, if you make very reasoned scientific arguments, you're losing the narrative battle because you're up against something that's very powerful and activates peoples' fears. 

How do we improve the narrative strategies? I'm a super strong advocate for more polling in specific places to understand what are the narratives that resonate with people, and how can we shape our advocacy around these narratives. I was just talking to an advocate running some public polls on violence against women online. There was such a big difference when talking about girls versus women. People were so much more willing to care about the issue when it is framed as being about children and children's safety. It might be that you’re motivated by the fact that a lot of women are getting hate and abuse online, but there's a bigger political coalition to do something about online safety for kids. Framing in that way gets you the same regulations, but you avoid that controversial language around gender that people are reacting against. 

We see on the far right that some of the resistance that's coming to fruition now started in the 60s. It was really laying the groundwork over a long time. So, using similarly long time horizons, where do we want to get and how do we adjust our strategies rather than starting with the most maximalist goal? 

And then one thing that people often highlight is that the funding ecosystem is different. There's a lot more ideological funding on the far right. But in the funding for gender equality, there's just not enough and it's more restrictive and project-based in a way that doesn't lend itself to these political struggles.

SK: Given the dual strategy of legislative rollbacks and repression of human rights activists, it can feel pretty hopeless and as if this is a runaway train that we can’t stop. Could you share some concrete steps that feminist activists and allies can take to counteract anti-gender equality narratives and policies?

SB: I think the broader movement needs to celebrate wins. There's a lot of legislative improvements, even as there's legislative rollbacks in other places. The fact that Mexico now has a female president, that didn't happen because of just a spur of the moment thing. That was a lot of organizing for a long time to get gender parity in Mexico across all levels of government, which is amazing and very unexpected. 

The other would be focusing on the amazing resilience of activists. Even in the most repressive and conflict-ridden places, women continue organizing in really amazing ways. That should give us all who are living in way less repressive and conflict-ridden places hope. Also, if you look at the history of the women's movement, there have been some pretty rough times in the past, and so there's a lot to learn from previous generations. How did they navigate it and what were their strategies when things looked pretty grim to plant seeds that maybe won't flower immediately, but they'll flower eventually? What does that look like in the current moment to be planting those seeds?

Solidarity is really important. When I speak with funders, I always tell them it's really important to fund convenings across places, particularly within regions where people have a lot of shared experiences. So, whether that's in the Caucasus or in East Africa, are there opportunities for regional activists to get together and exchange notes and share experiences, and also just have some solidarity with each other? I think that's another way of continuing even in the face of a lot of hardship.

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Glossary

• Apathy - lack of feeling, interest, or concern

• Authoritarian - political system that favors strong central powers, with limits on democracy, human rights, civil society, and political parties

• Autocracies - government in which one person possesses unlimited power 

• Autonomous - the right or power of self-government

• Begets - to produce as an effect 

• Brevity - shortness 

• Caucasus - region of southeastern Europe including Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and part of southern Russia

• Consolidated - joined together into a coherent, compact, or unified whole

• Controversial - causing disagreement or discussion

• Convenings - to come together for a meeting

• Dark money - anonymous political spending meant to influence political outcomes

• Democratic backsliding - declining integrity for democratic values or institutions in a political system

• Disparity - a noticeable and usually significant difference or dissimilarity

• Egalitarianism - advocating for the removal of inequalities among people

• Elucidate - to make more clear by explanation or analysis

• Entrenched - to establish solidly

• Flashpoint - a point at which someone or something bursts suddenly into action

• Fruition - when a plan or an idea begins to happen, exist, or be successful

• Gender parity - balance representation and participation of people of different genders across areas of society and levels of leadership

• Heteronormative - based on the attitude that heterosexuality is the only normal and natural expression of sexuality

• Hierarchy - a system in which people or things are arranged according to their importance or power

• Inextricably - incapable of being disentangled or untied

• Liberal values - political philosophy based on individual liberty, equality, and protection of human rights

• Litigation - a legal act or proceedings, such as a lawsuit

• Lobbying - activities aimed at influencing public officials, especially members of a legislative body

• Maximalist - advocating for immediate and direct action to secure the whole of a program or set of goals

• Norms - a principle of right action that guides, controls, or regulates proper and acceptable behavior in a group or society

• Patriarchal - relating to a social organization controlled by men of a disproportionately large share of power

• Perseverance - continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties or failures

• Phenomenon - someone or something special, unusual, or interesting

• Playbook - usual tactics or methods

• Populist - a supporter of a political philosophy or movement that represents or is claimed to represent the interests of ordinary people especially against the Establishment

• Rhetorical - speaking or writing formally and effectively as a way to persuade and influence people

• Runaway train - a situation in which something increases or develops very quickly and cannot be controlled

• Sovereignty - freedom from external control, an autonomous state

• Systemic - fundamental to a dominant social, economic, or political practice

• Venn diagram - a graph with circles that partly overlap, in which each circle represents a set and the area where they cross contains parts belonging to more than one set.

• Whittled - to gradually reduce the size or importance of something

• Women, Peace, and Security Agenda - established by UN Security Council Resolution 1325, the WPS Agenda acknowledges the distinct harms women and girls face in violent conflict and the necessity of women’s meaningful participation in peace processes