Rollback: The Coordinated Attack on Women’s Autonomy

Jorm Sangsorn

What I have come to understand—from conflict zones abroad to policy shifts here at home—is that attacks on women’s rights are not coincidental. They are connected. From Cabo Delgado to California, we are witnessing a playbook of control: restrict education, erode autonomy, and dismantle the systems that help girls and women rise. Different methods, same intent

My last duty station was in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique, a place that is in the midst of internal conflict.  It is where I lived and got to know citizens and residents in a way that many other humanitarian workers did not.  When I landed in Cabo Delgado, it was imperative that I attempt to make change in a way that I did not feel to do so in other duty stations.  Mozambique was my second home. I understood the nuances of culture, language, and daily life in ways that outsiders often didn’t.  I saw it with the eyes of a foreigner, and an outsider.  As a long time resident,  I saw it with the eyes of a woman that was sometimes subjected to its socio-cultural norms.  Only there did I begin to grasp the layered experience of womanhood in the global majority—and to feel, deeply, what it might mean to come of age as a girl in a place like Mozambique.

Girls in the global majority are both under the patriarchal scrutiny–while their voices and needs often remain invisible.  My work in global majority nations has shown me such challenges faced by women and girls such as fetching water, sourcing cooking fuel, managing a home and subsistence farm while others work for exploitative employers as well as cyber sexual harassment.  Women and girls face harmful social norms such as early forced marriage, female genital cutting/mutilation, femicide and acid burning.  These harmful traditional practices  are exacerbated during times of disaster and conflict due to social norms but also food insecurity and extreme poverty.  But they also have the added risks for such acts denial of food, and sexual assault and rape, as weapons of war.  I have not named them all.  In times of conflict, the cruelty inflicted on women and girls often knows no bounds

The way we combat harmful social norms, traditional practices and conflict-related sexual violence, is education and awareness building.  Data shows that when girls enter and stay in school, she is more likely not to marry early and pursue employment that will contribute to improving her economic status, especially if she, her family and community have been economically marginalized. USAID has been a key player in funding girl education initiatives.  And its dismantling will have harmful consequences for decades to come.  Even here in the U.S. we have seen the positive impact of girl education on our economy.  Namely, the MSNBC article "The devastating impact for women and girls if the Department of Education shuts down," by Katica Roy lays out succinctly how the shutdown will impact our economy and Title IX protections.

Education is the one tool proven to disrupt generational cycles of control. That’s why it’s so often targeted—because an educated girl becomes a woman who can say no. Thus, it is deeply misguided that the current U.S. administration is shutting down the Department of Education and “handing it to the states.” States have already been failing when they had a centralized entity to measure trends and evaluate national level statistics to guide development of training and curricula.  Our public education system has been failing since the early 1980s, earlier if you count the millions of African American children that were educated under a theory of separate but equal, which was never equal prior to desegregation.  

Our current system is facing declining student achievement, underfunding, redlining, and increasingly teacher shortages and burnout.  We are in dire need of having a guiding federal agency that will measure the gaps, provide support to states that have historically not invested in its systems and/or have weak state level tax systems to fund schools, and to provide a harmonized approach to what our children need and will learn.  We can envision what will happen to schools in locations dependent on income and/or other taxes:  the wealthier areas will have better schools.  Even with the rise of school choice options—charter schools, vouchers, education savings accounts—the outcomes remain unequal. Wealthier areas tend to have better-resourced schools, and disparities persist.

The rollbacks that we are witnessing, loudly protested in some cities, but accepted with silence by much of the country–are not just ideological.  They are economically and politically strategic. Defunding public education and dismantling DEI programs creates space for privatization, profit, and partisan control. When education is a private sector commodity instead of a public good, it’s the most marginalized—especially girls—who lose the most. Many who champion ‘parental rights’ also stand to gain from campaign contributions, corporate contracts, and culture wars that keep the public distracted from deeper systemic decay.

With such a plethora of options the thinking would be that our children, particularly, our girls will have their needs met.  In addition,  many point out the improved status of women in this country as an indication that perhaps emphasis on girl education may no longer be needed. Although female graduate school enrollment has increased in the last 10 years, there has been a decrease in female undergraduate enrollment. This is concerning. We are also witnessing a parallel strong effort to dismantle DEI, (see my last post).  

However, data in other areas that are adversely impacting girls in this country point to the need for education to be the strong base to which all girls can fall back to when facing challenges or lacking the social safety nets within their homes and communities.

Specifically, child (under 18) marriage is still legal in 80% of U.S. states, with 4 states lacking a minimum age for marriage with parental consent and/or judicial approval:  California, Mississippi, New Mexico and Oklahoma.  Child marriage was legal in all 50 states until 2018. I will say that one more time:  child marriage in the United States was only banned in a majority of states in 2018, a mere 7 years ago. Often girls are forced into marriage to spare parents the perceived shame of lost virginity or pregnancy. Early forced marriage anywhere in the world places girls at risk to abuse and exploitation by husbands as well as ill meaning family members. Furthermore, Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2023 and there are multiple states with restrictions to abortion access and care.  Only one conclusion can be made:  there is a systematic effort to place women back to a time that had us subservient and dependent on men.

Better never means better for everyone" A Handmaid’s Tale

We are witnessing not isolated rollbacks, but a pattern—a global strategy to control women’s minds, bodies, and futures. The tools differ: in some places, it’s child marriage or FGM. In the U.S., its DEI bans, school defunding, and abortion restrictions. But the intention is the same: control.

If we fail to connect these dots, we risk normalizing the slow dismantling of our rights under the guise of decentralization, culture, or ‘parental choice.’ We must stay vigilant and name these attacks for what they are: an orchestrated rollback of women’s autonomy.

The rollback of rights doesn’t always arrive with fanfare. Sometimes, it comes dressed as choice.  Other times as reform.   Very often it comes as tradition. But if we don’t name it for what it is—a global push to put women back in their place—we will wake up in a world where girls have fewer rights than their mothers did.  We’ve seen this before—in Afghanistan, in Iran, in every country where women’s rights were quietly stripped away. So why are we sitting back and letting it happen here?