With rights in peril, women have to fight just to stand still

Brainwashed by a homicidal policy" is how the man just elected president of Argentina described supporters of women's abortion rights. The far-right libertarian Javier Milei has pledged to hold a referendum to ban abortion, just three years after Argentina became the largest Latin American country to legalise it, and the country's feminists are gearing up for a big fight to protect their reproductive rights.

- Sonia Sodha

This development is part of a depressing global picture. The UN has said the world is failing women and girls, and is "way off track" to meet targets to improve women's lives. One in five girls is married before she turns 18, it is lawful to discriminate against women in more than half the countries in the world, and almost 250 million women experience physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner each year. In Afghanistan and Iran, the slide backwards from the relatively liberal 1970s, when women thronged the universities and cafes of Kabul and Tehran, has been absolute.

Iranian women cannot leave the home without wearing a hijab on pain of up to 10 years' imprisonment, and need their husband's permission to hold certain jobs or to get a passport; the Taliban has reimposed similar restrictions on Afghan women and in 2021 banned girls from attending secondary school.