Commentary: How women can resist autocracy in America

The Republican president-elect was found guilty of sexual misconduct, has faced a dozen or more allegations of sexual assault and harassment and ran a very publicly misogynist campaign.

The Democratic Party ran a campaign that targeted young women with the promise of protecting women’s reproductive rights but ultimately lost the election. And yet the Republican Party has won a decisive electoral victory.

As media pundits, campaign managers, and the politicians within the Democratic Party are still reeling from the results, it is worth pointing out that in electing a party that wants to roll back women’s rights, the United States is not exceptional, but is in fact part of a global phenomenon.

Over 60 countries, including eight out of 10 of the most populous countries in the world, held elections in 2024. Many of them have re-elected parties with dangerous policies against women’s autonomy, often masked in the language of “traditional family values.”

And yet, women in countries with right-wing governments have organized themselves, participated in electoral systems, resisted at every opportunity and achieved material gains. These events have occurred over decades, through independent movements. These women have produced collective experience, stories, concrete analysis, tactics and movement-building in the face of atrocities and crackdown.

Women everywhere are indeed finding creative ways to fight for their rights in every part of the world. The women’s movement in the United States should take this opportunity to learn from their strategies and their successes.

Take for example India, which famously administered the biggest elections in the world in 2024 and chose to re-elect a party known for its campaigns promoting an ethno-nationalist state and for the sexual assault allegations against its members, who continue to act with impunity. When the government tried to bring discriminatory citizenship laws, thousands of women blocked a major artery in the capital in protest for three of the coldest months. Women played an instrumental role in the 2021 farmer’s protest and sit-in that lasted close to a year and led to the repeal of three harmful laws. In the 2024 elections, the party lost its majority in the Indian Parliament.

Another example is South Korea, where President Yoon Suk Yeol has not appointed a minister for gender equality and family since 2022, keeping his election commitment of scrapping the ministry altogether and replacing it with a “Population Ministry” to boost birth rates. Women in Korea have been finding ways to push back on state efforts to confine them to the singular role of mother, emblematic in movements like the 4B boycott of all sexual contact with men.

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro — a man with a lengthy history of abusive and sexist commentary — appointed an anti-choice lawyer as the attorney-general as he launched an attack on “gender-ideology” under the guise of “Christian values.” Women in Brazil overwhelmingly resisted in mass movements and at the ballot box. Bolsonaro lost the presidency to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, bringing women’s lives back on the radar of the national government.

In 2024, the United States is not alone in handing power to a conservative party that seeks to control women. But U.S. women are also not alone in resisting this government overreach.

Around the world, women have tirelessly pushed back on laws that have historically denied them an equal status, securing fair compensation and opposing harsh labor conditions, or forming grassroots movements against sexual violence. Women have brought attention to and organized action against the underlying cause of the social, economic and political crises they face. From mass protests, community-level organizing and the relentless courage to counter deeply persistent inequality in every sector, women have not stopped under any regime since none have resolved the patriarchal root causes and the systems.

All this predates the present global tide of far-right governments, but it will outlive them. In the U.S., Black women, Indigenous women, Latina women, Asian American women and working class women are ready to lead and they will find that they are not alone in this struggle.

The U.S. may not be as exceptional and unique in its conditions and its responses as the media would have us believe. It is true that with the country’s immense resources and consequent influence, the decisions made in the White House have an impact throughout the world. But this is all the more reason to ensure that domestic movements for justice and equality are aligned with the interests of the women everywhere, who have been fighting this for decades.

For the women in the U.S., a Trump presidency will no doubt bring challenges. This is a particularly difficult time for racialized women, Muslim women, immigrants and women without any social safety net. They are not alone. There is a deep history of organizing and advocacy under extremely repressive conditions. This is an opportunity and the time to learn and reflect on how women have successfully pushed back against state abuse of power, often in harsher, violent and dangerous environments. An exercise of genuine solidarity, this would remain necessary under the Democrats or the Republicans or perhaps another system altogether.

The knowledge of women across the world can be a powerful beacon of hope, complementing the existing knowledge among women in the U.S. and explore new arenas for women’s rights — strategies that go beyond established institutions, Wall Street donors and social media campaigns. Instead, building a stronger base of women as a political force can shift the cultural and political tides back.

This can take the form of broad-based alliances. Purposefully reaching out to women organizing in rural areas, in different labor sectors, in community groups, and bringing them in to share knowledge and developing points of unity is necessary, and the only way we can survive the rise of the far right.

In addition to learning, the American movements must amplify the calls to action and the demands. After all, the patriarchal and capitalist institutions are well-organized and well-connected, and if we are seriously planning to defeat them, our movements have to be even more organized and connected to each other.

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Misra is an international human rights lawyer who has worked with women's rights movements in Canada, India, Iran, Argentina, Somalia and Kenya, among other countries.

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