Dear Colleagues,
We join you in rejecting the global anti-gender movement’s claims of “protecting women” to justify their attacks of transgender people, and their fearmongering about “open borders” to legitimize family separation and merciless detention.
Acting US Representative to the UN Economic and Social Council’s statement last week to the 69th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women is an example of how this movement is weaponizing women’s rights to roll back fundamental freedoms for all.
“Gender plays a powerful role in the construction and promulgation of power and identity that is particularly meaningful in authoritarian regimes,” global security experts write. “As history shows, when those gender-based power structures are challenged by everyday citizens, profound societal change becomes possible. Gender therefore appears to be a key, if underappreciated, fault line in the authoritarian societies with which the United States and its allies are strategically competing.”
Thank you for everything each of you are doing to ensure we are not ceding ground to rhetoric designed to dismantle our power to imagine a gender equal world.
Instead, we reaffirm our commitment to stand together against all forms of cruel or unjust use of authority by a government or state apparatus against a specific group or groups of people. Join us.
Onward,
Elizabeth Barajas-Román
Women’s Funding Network
President & CEO