Ali Velshi: Women's Rights Are Vanishing. Women Fight Back

In the wake of International Women’s Day, Ali Velshi shares how women’s rights are eroding all over the world — and how women persist in the fight for equality. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres recently described women’s rights as “vanishing before our eyes.” The United Nations predicts gender equity is 300 years away — and points to Afghanistan as the very worst example of repression of women and girls.

After the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, the regime banned women from access to an education past the sixth grade and prohibited them from entering all manner of public and private spaces. Nonetheless, Afghan women gathered on International Women’s Day to protest for their rights.

So too did women in Pakistan, Iran, Columbia, Brazil, the Philippines, France, Spain, Germany, and Japan. Women showed up in the streets and online to demand safety, the right to keep their last names, access to education, equitable pay, and bodily autonomy.

This was also the first International Women’s Day when millions of American women had lost their right to safe and legal abortion.

As women’s rights vanish, the fight becomes more difficult — and continues.