Progress is Not Permanent
March 2, 2026
Women today are more educated, economically independent, and politically represented than at any point in human history. And those gains are under attack. In country after country, progress is being met with organized resistance. Rights that took generations to secure are being contested, narrowed, and in some places eliminated. Progress and regression are unfolding simultaneously, and history reminds us that neither direction is guaranteed.
Human dignity is not conditional. It does not depend on geography, ideology, or election cycles. But around the world, women and girls encounter laws and cultural norms that treat their rights as negotiable. Women’s History Month invites us to celebrate hard-won advances, and to name the work that remains.
Rights rarely disappear overnight. They erode — incrementally, strategically, and often under the language of reform or as a return to “traditional values.” In the United States, this erosion has taken the form of organized anti-democracy and White Christian nationalist movements calling for rigid, hierarchical systems rooted in patriarchal authority — systems that begin in the family and extend outward into civic life, resting on the premise that men hold primary authority while women and children occupy subordinate roles.
The consequences are significant. Since 2021, thirteen states have enacted abortion bans. In some of those states, women have faced delayed or denied care for ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages, and cancer treatment while legal teams debate whether their conditions qualify as emergencies. Bodily autonomy has become geographically determined.
Legislative efforts in multiple states are also working to narrow protections against discrimination. At the federal level, policy blueprints such as Project 2025 and Project 2026 outline sweeping changes that could weaken education, employment, healthcare, and voting rights. These are not hypothetical threats. They are policy positions with named authors, legislative sponsors, and implementation timelines.
The same pattern is visible globally, and the warning signs are even starker. In Afghanistan, girls remain barred from secondary and university education. Just six years ago, Afghan women held more than a quarter of the seats in Parliament. Today, women are excluded from national leadership, and many former officials live in exile. The near-erasure of women from public life illustrates how quickly rights can disappear when institutions fail to protect them.
Democratic backsliding in countries such as Hungary, Israel, and Turkey has also coincided with declining women’s political representation and weakened legal protections. History is consistent: when women’s rights contract, broader human rights instability often follows. The status of women is an indicator of democratic health.
This is precisely where education becomes prevention. When people understand how dehumanization works — the ways language shifts, legal standards narrow, and normalization dulls concern — they are better prepared to interrupt it. The loss of rights rarely begins with a single dramatic event. It starts when harmful ideas go unchallenged and small changes go unquestioned.
The forces working against women’s rights are real, organized, and growing. So is our capacity to respond. The question before us is not whether these challenges exist. They do. But history also tells us this: when people choose to meet such moments with courage and conviction, progress that once seemed impossible is eventually won.