What We’re Up Against: The Challenge of Fighting for Women’s Rights in 2025
Originally published by Susan Blaustein for Ms. Magazine
As we enter 2025 at what seems to be a heyday of impunity for human rights abuses worldwide, autocratic leaders worldwide are taking note. In countries rich and poor, these leaders are flexing their muscles by curtailing our rights—to speak our minds, control our bodies, vote our consciences and have access to fundamental things as safe shelter, clean water and affordable nutrition, education and healthcare.
At WomenStrong International, our partners across the globe are seeing this ramp-up of restrictions up close.
In Afghanistan this January, the Taliban upped the ante on their 80 repressive measures targeting girls’ and women’s rights by banning them from attending any medical training institution. Two years ago, the Taliban banned Afghan women from attending university and from working for domestic and international non-governmental agencies, strangling aid workers’ ability to identify and support families in need and contributing to the nation’s sky-high maternal mortality rate, already one of the highest in the world.