In 2021 the U.S. was flagged as a backsliding democracy by @Int_IDEA – w/ noted lapses in effective legislative bodies and freedoms of expression and assembly 2/14
Around the same time, when TX #SB8 went into effect some smart folks looked at the correlation between abortion rollbacks & backsliding democracies @nytimes@Max_Fisher 3/14 nytimes.com/2021/09/09/wor…
Fisher wrote: “Majoritarianism and the rights of women, the only universal majority, are inextricably linked. Where one rises or falls, so does the other.” 4/14
Is the inverse also true? Could it be that all along, America’s longstanding abysmal record on gender equity has been a harbinger for our downgraded democratic status? 5/14
According to @UN_women, the trajectory of “de-democratization” is rarely initially analyzed through the distinct lens of gender equity 6/14 unwomen.org/en/digital-lib…
True, the U.S. is experiencing an *increase* in women’s representation, including in Congress, as VP, on SCOTUS, and in statehouses. See latest @CAWP_RU stats 7/14 cawp.rutgers.edu/facts/current-…
But these raw numbers don’t tell the whole story. In fact, women’s equity in leadership in the U.S. lags relative to much of the world. 8/14
And relative representation is still pretty dismal, especially for women of color. Today there are zero Black women in the Senate. And a Black woman has never served as state governor. 9/14
The U.S. also ranks low on essential ingredients for women’s participation in the body politic – from maternal mortality rates, to paid leave, to pay equity, etc. @everymomcounts@paygapapp#marshallplanformoms 10/13
And other crises: U.S. corrections and detention have few guardrails against barbaric, abusive practices like forced sterilization, shackling during labor, and denial of menstrual products. @abfettig@RiaTabaccoMar@marnisommer 13/14
Are these byproducts of a democracy on the decline, or drivers themselves of a downward spiral? We MUST be able to answer that question – and address the ways women & esp. WOC have been canaries in the coal mine all along 14/14
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