Laws alone will not protect women

It semes that every day that passes, there is a new reminder of how far we have yet to go before we can say that we have built a world free of sexual inequality.

- EMMELINE AGLIPAY-VILLAR

But few of these reminders are as on point as the one which occurred on Nov. 4 this year when, during a five-minute walk from Mexico's National Palace to 9 the Education Ministry, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum was groped by a drunken man in public and on camera. One could hardly ask for a clearer example of how these two things can be simultaneously true: that individual women can hold positions of great power and that women as a whole still suffer under the yoke of patriarchal attitudes and misogyny.

Whenever days such as Women's Day, or last month's International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (VAW), come around, there are voices that rise in cynical protest. There are always those who claim that women already enjoy equal rights, that there is no longer any need to give special attention to women's issues, or that doing so somehow makes men the oppressed class. While most of these complaints are disingenuous and wielded in bad faith by those with a vested interest in men believing that they are victims of women, it is still important that the progress that has been made on women's issues not eclipse the many problems that still remain.

Yes, in many places, women are now capable of holding the highest political office, many are executives in top corporations or respected professionals in industries that were once almost entirely male dominated. Women's rights and women's issues are discussed much more openly, and factored into many more systems and institutions than ever before.