Commentary Links Attacks on Women’s Rights to the Rise of Authoritarian Politics

Last updated: 15 October 2026

Not Your Body, Not Your Life, Not Your Choice / Gayatri Malhotra

On March 6, 2026, Human Rights Watch published a commentary arguing that attacks on women’s rights are not secondary features of authoritarian rule but one of its defining strategies. The article says that in today’s political climate, governments moving toward more authoritarian models are increasingly making gender and sexuality central political targets, using campaigns against women’s autonomy and LGBT rights to reinforce broader efforts to weaken democraticinstitutions, expand executive power, and narrow public freedoms.

The piece begins by drawing a distinction between older forms of dictatorship and more recent authoritarian movements. In the past, it says, restrictions on women’s rights were often embedded within wider ideological struggles such as capitalismversus Marxism or nationalism versus anti-colonialism. Today, by contrast, the article argues that women’s rights and gender equality are being attacked far more directly and deliberately. Rather than appearing as side effects of a political doctrine, they have become visible political targets in their own right. In this framing, efforts to control women are not accidental byproducts of authoritarianism; they are part of its modern operating logic.

A major idea running through the commentary is that the language of “gender ideology” has become a powerful political tool for leaders with authoritarian ambitions. The article says figures such as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin use the termto frame women’s autonomy, reproductive freedom, and LGBT rights as threats to social order. According to the piece, this rhetoric invokes a vision of the past in which women had fewer rights, domestic violence remained hidden as a privatematter, and traditional hierarchy was treated as natural. In that sense, the commentary presents anti-gender discourse not merely as a cultural dispute, but as a broader political language used to justify concentration of power and rollback ofrights.

The article then turns to Russia as one of its clearest examples. It says Putin has publicly described women’s most important role as being tied to family and childcare, reinforcing a state-centered vision of womanhood rooted in domestic duty. Atthe same time, the piece notes, Russian authorities have cracked down on women’s rights organizations, adopted penalties against the promotion of what they call “childfree ideology,” and introduced policies and regulations that increasinglyrestrict access to abortion. The commentary links these measures to the country’s broader political trajectory, including constitutional and political changes that allow Putin to remain in power indefinitely. In that reading, the attack on reproductiveand social autonomy is presented as part of a wider authoritarian consolidation.

The United States is described as another major example, though in a different institutional context. The article argues that the Trump administration has vilified women’s autonomy through support for anti-abortion laws and by cutting US funding to foreign organizations that provide abortion services or even discuss abortion-related care. It also says the administration rolled back workplace nondiscrimination protections and other civil rights safeguards. In addition, thecommentary argues that efforts to restrict gender-affirming care for trans people have been justified through claims about defending women from so-called gender ideology, even as those same political forces have also promoted an expansiveview of executive authority and helped undermine public confidence in democratic institutions. The point made in the article is that attacks on bodily autonomy and attacks on institutional checks are developing side by side.

One of the commentary’s most concise arguments appears in its central line that the hallmarks of authoritarian power grabs often include efforts to control women. This statement functions as the article’s core thesis. The commentary is notarguing only that women suffer under authoritarian systems; it is arguing that restrictions on women are an early warning sign of a broader project to weaken freedom for everyone. When leaders narrow women’s choices over family, education, healthcare, work, and public participation, the article suggests, they are also signaling a willingness to subordinate rights more generally to state ideology and personal power.

The article also points to El Salvador under President Nayib Bukele. It says Bukele has rejected what he calls gender ideology as anti-natural, anti-God, and anti-family, while also opposing the legalization of abortion and same-sex marriage. Atthe same time, the commentary notes that the legislature dominated by his party amended the constitution to allow indefinite presidential re-election. This example is important to the article because it ties restrictions on gender and sexualitydirectly to a visible institutional shift: the weakening of constitutional barriers to prolonged rule. The issue, in this interpretation, is not just moral conservatism but the use of social issues in a wider project of executive entrenchment.

The most extreme example in the commentary is Afghanistan. The article describes Taliban rule as the clearest current illustration of the link between authoritarian government and systematic dismantling of women’s rights. Since returning topower in 2021, the Taliban have barred girls from education beyond the sixth grade, sharply restricted women’s employment, and severely limited women’s freedom of movement, expression, and association. The article also says womenprotesters and outspoken critics are routinely detained. Afghanistan is presented as the furthest point on the spectrum described by the commentary: a case where the destruction of women’s autonomy has become inseparable from thedestruction of public freedom more broadly.

Across these different countries, the article argues, there is a recognizable political pattern. Governments with very different ideological traditions, regional settings, and institutional structures are nevertheless converging around similar campaignsagainst women’s rights and gender equality. That convergence is one of the commentary’s most striking observations. It suggests that opposition to women’s autonomy is becoming a shared language across otherwise different authoritarian orilliberal projects. The article does not claim these governments are identical, but it does argue that they share a common instinct: to portray gender equality and sexual diversity as threats, then use that framing to justify tighter control over publiclife.

At the same time, the commentary does not end in pure pessimism. Its final section highlights what it calls “seeds of hope.” It points to women in Minneapolis who are helping protect their communities from ICE enforcement, despite seriouspersonal risks. It also refers to women in Iran who continue to resist repression while demanding not only their own rights but a broader political transformation for society as a whole. These examples matter because they shift the article away froma simple catalog of repression. They show that women are not portrayed only as victims of authoritarian systems, but also as central actors in resisting them.

This conclusion strengthens the article’s wider democratic argument. If the assault on women’s rights is one sign of authoritarian ambition, then the defense of those rights becomes part of defending democracy itself. The commentary explicitlysays that women’s autonomy should be understood as an indicator of the scale of authoritarian ambitions. Protecting it, the article argues, helps protect everyone’s freedom. Ignoring attacks on it allows broader forms of political repression todeepen. In that sense, the piece treats women’s rights not as a separate “social issue,” but as a frontline issue in the struggle over the future of open societies.

Another notable feature of the commentary is its publication context. It appeared as a commentary rather than a straight news report and was published in Global Cause, while being republished on the Human Rights Watch site. That formatshapes the article’s style: it is interpretive, comparative, and argumentative rather than focused on one breaking event. Still, its factual structure rests on concrete policy and political developments — abortion restrictions, anti-LGBT rhetoric, education bans, and constitutional change — to support its larger thesis about authoritarianism. The result is a piece that reads as a warning about current global trends rather than a report on one isolated incident.

More broadly, the commentary suggests that debates over women’s rights should be read as debates about the political order itself. When governments restrict reproductive freedom, punish gender nonconformity, glorify rigid family roles, andsuppress organizations working on equality, they are also shaping what kind of democracy — if any — can survive. The article’s broader message is that attacks on women often reveal the deeper direction of a regime before other institutionalchanges are fully visible. That is why, in its telling, women’s rights matter not only to women, but to anyone concerned with democratic decline and the concentration of power.

Conclusion

The commentary presents attacks on women’s rights as a political warning sign, not a secondary cultural dispute. Its central argument is that when governments move to restrict women’s autonomy, reproductive freedom, and equal publicparticipation, they are often also moving to weaken democratic institutions and concentrate power more broadly.

More broadly, the article helps explain why the issue draws such sustained attention across very different countries. In its view, women’s rights have become one of the clearest arenas in which contemporary authoritarian politics revealthemselves, making the defense of those rights inseparable from the defense of democracy itself.

Where governments make gender a political target, women may have claims based on particular social group or political opinion; our expert witness finder lists experts by country.