Misogyny is in a smirk, a meme or in violence

Hatred of women persists, influencing them to internalise inferiority. Resistance is to challenge patriarchal norms and curated femininities

- PAIGE BENTON

Every year, when 9 August rolls around, we parade Women's Day like a trophy.

We are reminded of 1956, when thousands, including Lillian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Sophia Williams and Rahima Moosa, confronted the apartheid status quo of racial discrimination and female oppression. We are reminded to be awed by those women who challenged injustice, but not so inspired to become them.

This Women's Day, we need to reflect on how the echoes of misogyny are reverberating around the world, with the rise of anti-feminist movements, the rolling back of women's rights, affecting us all. It appears the “we” who hate women is growing and our socialised passivity allows the echo of misogyny to be deafening.

Misogyny isn’t always overtly violent; we don’t always call it hate, it’s advice, it’s a smirk, a shared meme. But the hate is there, unexpected, subtle and inherited. From the day women are born, they are socialised into being the other, being treated as defective, dirty and hysterical.

Women in liberal constitutional democracies today are told to be grateful — we have rights, programmes, seats at the table. Yet research suggests that, although the inclusion of women in leadership positions has increased, they hold less institutional power than men. Women are disproportionately confined to people-centred roles, while men consolidate their power on golf courses, over whiskeys in cigar lounges, free to let loose, be “politically incorrect”, express their distaste for equality, feminism and women’s rights movements.