Positioning Women in Conflict Studies

"On March 6, 2023, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres (2023) warned that decades of global progress on women's status are "vanishing before our eyes." Speaking to the Commission on the Status of Women in New York, he listed examples of global rollbacks to women and girls' status including the erasure of women from public life in Afghanistan, the backsliding on reproductive health in many countries, and the kidnapping and killing of girls. He suggested that the goal of "gender equality" is at least "300 years away." The Secretary-General is not necessarily exaggerating in his statement. Progress on improving women's status globally has slowed, stalled, or even reversed (England, Levine, and Mishel 2020a; 2020b; Moyer 2023). For one, the Covid-19 global pandemic exacerbated women's conditions around the world. Domestic violence increased, job insecurity for women worsened, access to sexual and reproductive health services declined, women face higher levels of food and water insecurity than men, and girls' enrollment in schools has dropped. Amnesty International's Secretary General, Agnès Callamard, sums up the grim news in this way, "events [in 2021 and 2022] have conspired to crush the rights and dignity of millions of women and girls. The world's crises do not impact equally, let alone fairly. The disproportionate impacts on women's and girls' rights are well-documented yet still neglected, when not ignored outright.""--