Not Only a Battle Over Language

This article was written before the recent war on Lebanon. What happened afterward did not invalidate any of what was written here, it confirmed it. When cities are reduced to rubble, women’s rights are often the first to be postponed and the last to be restored.

Every year on March 8, the world prepares to mark International Women’s Day. This year, however, it arrives amid a dangerous regional landscape. In Lebanon, feminist organizations have for some time been subjected to organized smear campaigns and accusations of betrayal. In Egypt, debates around sexual harassment have returned to the forefront. In Tunisia, the space for women’s rights defenders is shrinking under the pressure of democratic backsliding. Syrian feminist activists are organizing their work from Beirut rather than from Syria. In Palestine, women’s groups stand powerless in the face of the genocide committed against the Palestinian people. In Sudan, sexual violence is being used as a weapon of war amid the complete collapse of protection systems.

I think about these issues while reviewing reports I have long worked on updating, examining gender justice in the legislation of Arab countries. Years of work have been immersed in detailed legal debates on the extent to which national legislation aligns with international standards and even more intense debates over terminology: should we speak of “justice” or “equality”? Of “reproductive health” or “sexual and reproductive health and rights”? These may appear to be linguistic details, but they are far from trivial.

Terms such as “gender,” “gender-based violence,” “sexual and reproductive health and rights,” “comprehensive sexual education,” and “safe abortion” frequently appear in United Nations classifications and resolutions. At the same time, some countries and organizations are attempting to purge international law of these terms, using language review as a tool to challenge and weaken international standards.

This dynamic is not limited to countries in the region. The United States once threatened to veto UN Security Council Resolution 2467 condemning sexual violence against women in conflict; the resolution was adopted only after references to survivors’ rights to sexual and reproductive health care were removed. This was not an exception but part of a broader pattern. The United States later joined international coalitions and declarations that explicitly seek to remove such terminology from UN documents under the banner of national sovereignty and the protection of the family.

The issue is certainly not about clinging to a specific term. Any concept can be debated and refined; human rights language has always evolved. What is happening today, however, is not a discussion about conceptual precision. It is a political effort to withdraw the legal foundations on which rights claims are built. The distinction is fundamental.

Yet if the removal of terminology represents one dimension of the attack, another, and more insidious, dimension lies in the appropriation of feminist discourse itself to advance an alternative normative, cultural, and linguistic framework. Anti-feminist leaders adopt the language of women’s rights and appoint women to high positions, not to empower independent feminist leadership but to contain it within the framework of their own political projects.

In Italy, Giorgia Meloni has emphasized a “feminine” and “nurturing” leadership style while advancing policies that undermine women’s rights in practice. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, who faced accusations of misogyny, appointed Damares Alves as Minister of Women, Family, and Human Rights; her tenure contributed to further restricting access to abortion, even in the case of a ten-year-old girl who had been sexually assaulted. In Argentina, Javier Milei appointed Victoria Villarruel as his vice president despite his open hostility toward feminist initiatives; she opposed broader representation for women and abortion rights. In Poland, the president of the Constitutional Court joined the 2020 ruling that further restricted an already highly limited abortion law.

The Arab region is not isolated from this wave; it represents one of its most complex arenas. The region offers a classic example of what can be described as the “hijacking of discourse.” Many Arab governments have adopted an official rhetoric of “women’s empowerment,” often linked to visions of economic modernization. Gulf states represent the most prominent model of this approach, emphasizing women’s economic participation while drawing clear red lines around reforms related to family law, sexual violence, and sexual and reproductive rights.

What distinguishes the situation across the region, however, is that this “discursive capture” does not come solely from official institutions. Religious authorities, as well as legal, cultural, and social systems, also play a role in granting discrimination and violence a form of legitimacy. This makes the struggle over terminology even more intense. When the term “gender” is rejected in New York or Geneva, the repercussions are amplified in countries of the region, where such international rejection is used as additional justification to close local debates and legitimize attacks on women’s rights.

The irony is that several countries in the region had used the term “gender” for years, developing national strategies under its banner and establishing committees and institutions working within its framework before suddenly reversing course and rejecting it, raising many questions about the motivations behind such shifts.

In this context, where long-standing structural conditions and the weakening authority of international law have created fertile ground for resistance to women’s rights discourse, the backlash against gender equality cannot be understood as merely a battle over language. It is a struggle over democracy itself and over the values and principles of human rights.

At the same time, debating terminology does not mean remaining fixed in place. If the struggle revolves around words, the question the feminist movement must ask itself is not only how to protect existing terms, but also whether our current language is sufficient to describe the realities we are living. This does not mean rejecting these terms, they represent real achievements but holding onto them without reflection may limit our ability to reach the audiences we need to engage. This is a different conversation, one that deserves its own space.

On March 8, statements will be issued and speeches delivered. But the real celebration of women’s rights is not found in what we say on one day of the year. It lies in the determination to ensure that what constitutes the very essence of those rights is never erased from the discourse on any day.