Authoritarians and the Backlash Against Female Empowerment

Much anguish has been expressed over the right-wing populists who have either gained power or threaten to gain power in their various countries.  The usual explanations for their surge in popularity include anger at lack of economic advancement and dismay at the threat of multiculturalism that will ensue if immigration is not severely limited.  Peter Beinart suggests that the explanation is more complicated and another factor is critical to understanding in an article for The Atlantic titled The New Authoritarians Are Waging War on Women (titled The Global Backlash Against Women in the paper version).  He begins his piece with this lede.

“Donald Trump’s ideological cousins around the world want to reverse the feminist gains of recent decades.”

Trump’s “ideological cousins” include the heads of state of Brazil, the Philippines, Hungary, and Poland.

“When Americans look abroad these days, they see Donald Trumps everywhere: In Brazil, whose new president, Jair Bolsonaro, endorses torture, threatens to pull out of the Paris climate-change agreement, and suggests that his country was better off under military rule. In the Philippines, where President Rodrigo Duterte has overseen the extrajudicial killing of thousands of alleged drug dealers and threatened to impose martial law nationwide. In Hungary, where Prime Minister Victor Orban has quashed the free press, enriched his cronies, and stoked fear and hatred of refugees. In Poland, whose Law and Justice Party has undermined the independence of the supreme court.”

When recorded history began, men had gained dominance.  From their positions of power, they created religions and hierarchical structures in political, economic, and family life that reinforced their power.  Female empowerment is a threat to these male cultural entitlements.

“To understand global Trumpism, argues Valerie M. Hudson, a political scientist at Texas A&M, it’s vital to remember that for most of human history, leaders and their male subjects forged a social contract: ‘Men agreed to be ruled by other men in return for all men ruling over women.’ This political hierarchy appeared natural—as natural as adults ruling children—because it mirrored the hierarchy of the home. Thus, for millennia, men, and many women, have associated male dominance with political legitimacy. Women’s empowerment ruptures this order.”

It is relatively easy to illustrate Beinart’s point with Trump’s campaign.

“He made Hillary Clinton—the first woman ever nominated for president by a major party—the personification of America’s corrupt political system. But rather than credibly promise to cleanse America of corrupting financial interests, he promised his supporters—the majority of whom told pollsters that America had grown “too soft and feminine”—a government cleansed of the corruption of one particular villainess.”

“Outside Trump rallies, vendors sold T-shirts showing Trump as a bare-chested boxer towering over a suggestively posed Clinton. TRUMP 2016. "FINALLY SOMEONE WITH BALLS read one pin."  Declared another: "DON’T BE A PUSSY, VOTE FOR TRUMP IN 2016." Inside the rallies, crowds chanted 'Lock her up,' a taunt never directed at Trump’s male primary rivals. Again and again, Trump responded to women who challenged him politically—Fox News’s Megyn Kelly, his rival presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren—by calling them ugly. After his second debate with Clinton, he observed that she had ‘walked in front of me, and ‘believe me, I wasn’t impressed.’ The implication was clear: No matter how high a woman ascends, she’s ultimately just a body whose value is determined by men.”

Probably the best example of a Trump lookalike is Jair Bolsonaro, the newly elected leader of Brazil.

“Like Trump, Bolsonaro linked this counterrevolution to a counterrevolution against uppity women. When, as a legislator, he voted to impeach Brazil’s first female president, Dilma Rousseff—who had been tortured by Brazil’s military rulers in the early 1970s—he dedicated the vote to one of that regime’s most infamous torturers. In 2015, he told a Brazilian congresswoman, “I would not rape you, because you are not worthy of it.” Crowds at Bolsonaro rallies chanted that they would feed dog food to feminists. And, like Trump, Bolsonaro has intense support from his country’s growing population of evangelicals, who appreciate his fervent opposition to abortion and gay rights.”

Consideration of Duterte’s rule in the Philippines has focused on his violent war on drugs, but he makes no secret of his disdain for women.

“Also like Bolsonaro, Duterte has threatened violence against women. In 2017, he informed Filipino soldiers that because he had declared martial law on the island of Mindanao, they could each rape up to three women with impunity. In 2018, he told soldiers to shoot female rebels ‘in the vagina,’ because that would render them ‘useless’.”

“Duterte’s antifeminist crusade—like Trump’s and Bolsonaro’s—has also featured the ritualized humiliation of powerful women. When Senator Leila de Lima demanded an investigation into Duterte’s drug war, he vowed to ‘make her cry.’ The government then detained de Lima on drug-trafficking charges and leaked evidence supposedly proving, in Duterte’s words, that she was ‘screwing her driver’ like she was ‘screwing the nation’.”

Other autocratic leaders are better known for other political outrages, but also demonstrate similar desires to counter women’s social and political gains.

“Not all of the new authoritarians are this flamboyant. But they all link the new political order they seek to create to a more subordinate and traditional role for women. Orbán, who has accused his predecessors of permitting immigrants and Roma to undermine Hungary’s identity, has proposed ‘a comprehensive agreement with Hungarian women’ to bear more children. He promotes debt-free education for women, but only if they have at least three children.”

“For its part, Poland’s autocratic government has run ads urging Poles to ‘breed like rabbits’ and banned over-the-counter access to the morning-after pill. In late 2017, after Polish women protested draconian new restrictions on abortion, the government raided the offices of women’s groups.”

What does this mean for the future of women?  Does greater empowerment merely generate a greater backlash? 

Beinart provides an example of where female empowerment has become official policy that has been successfully implemented.  The Nordic countries of Iceland, Finland, Sweden Denmark, and Norway all have high representation by women in their political structures.

“Compare the United States, the Philippines, Brazil, Hungary, and Poland with the countries of northern Europe, where women’s political power has become more normal. In 2017, women made up 48 percent of Iceland’s parliament. In Sweden, the share was 44 percent; in Finland, 42 percent; and in Norway, 40 percent. In the countries that have recently elected gender-backlash authoritarians, the rates are lower, ranging from Italy’s 31 percent to Hungary’s 10 percent.”

Beinart associates Nordic rights for females with a tendency for males to take a more active role in household activities rather than allowing them to be a burden associated only with females.

“There is a striking correlation between countries where women and men behave more equally in the home and countries where women are more equally represented in government. Take Sweden, 44 percent of whose parliamentarians are women. There, the gap between the amount of housework done by men and that done by women is less than an hour a day. In the U.S., where women will soon make up roughly 23 percent of Congress, the housework gender gap is an hour and a half. In Hungary, where women account for 10 percent of parliament, it is well over two hours.”

This leads him to conclude that it may take generations for those patterns of behavior to change in the countries he has discussed.  He finishes with this comment.

“Women looking to unseat Trump or Bolsonaro in the next election may find little comfort in the Nordic example. Family dynamics change not year by year, but generation by generation. Nonetheless, the new authoritarianism underscores the importance of an old feminist mantra: The personal is political. Foster women’s equality in the home, and you may save democracy itself.”

Beinart’s interpretation of the Nordic example leads him astray.  Women in those countries did not become equal because household customs drifted towards equality.  They became equal because policies were implemented that made them equal.  Let women continue to acquire political power and they will create legislation that supports fairness between genders, and that fairness will seep into the education we provide our children and even into household activities.  It can happen quite quickly if women—all women—want it to happen.  In the United States, women, if they stick together, could take control of the Democratic Party.  And with their numbers of voters, they could control the political agenda.  It could happen quite rapidly.

The interested reader might find the following articles informative:

Understanding Trump’s Base

Republicans Hate Uppity Women More Than They Hate Uppity Blacks

Scandinavia and Gender Equality