EQUAL RIGHTS
Are Women’s Rights Human Rights?
Historically, the United States government has played a twisted game of tug-of-war with women’s rights.
It seems like, if it’s not about controlling our bodies, it’s about controlling where our bodies can go. Refugee law is a perfect example.
For decades, the U.S. has flip-flopped on whether gender-based violence should be recognized as the public health crisis that it is, or if it should be a private matter – in other words, are women’s rights human rights?
And, more simply, do we see women as human beings?
In the 90s, some progress was made.
Women could finally be recognized under asylum law as a “particular social group,” a legal designation for a group of people whose identity makes them targets for persecution.
This is an important distinction because it determines who qualifies for protections under international refugee standards, and the change led to women survivors being able to seek asylum when fleeing extreme violence.
Around the same time, Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) – a law that declares domestic violence (DV), sexual assault (SA), stalking, and intimate-partner violence (IPV) as crimes that demand coordinated public response.
VAWA is critical for survivor support, as it funds and provides resources for countless services, including legal aid, crisis centers, housing protections, and trauma-informed law-enforcement training.
In 2014, a landmark case confirmed that domestic violence could qualify as persecution.
Better late than never. But in the U.S., women’s rights and protections are conditional, and that progress didn’t last long.
In 2018, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions rolled back protections for survivors of domestic violence, signaling a return to treating violence against women as a “private matter” that doesn’t require legal intervention.
Years later, these protections were reinstated, but now we once again find ourselves facing more backsliding.
Unsurprisingly, this time, it’s even more pronounced. The Violence Against Women Act is under threat from proposed funding cuts, while at the same time our government is moving to erase gender from refugee protection entirely.
These rollbacks not only ignore gender-based violence, but they send the crystal-clear message that it’s acceptable. And I refuse to accept that.
It’s More Than Just Semantics
Removing the ‘gender’ part of the asylum framework isn’t just a change in legal language; it actively erases lived experiences of countless women – it rewrites a reality from which we’ve already been erased in so many other ways.
It took generations to get here.
For me to be allowed a job – or to write this article without a man claiming credit for my work.
For my cousins to vote.
For my grandmother to own a home.
For my friend to live free from marital rape.
And for my sister across the border to flee violence she didn’t ask for or deserve.
Without gender recognition, survivors of severe violence could be deported back into danger – or sent to an entirely different country, detained indefinitely, and essentially punished further for the abuse they endured.
This is cruel, and it’s a slap in the face to decades’ worth of progress.
VAWA was built on the premise that violence is not a private matter, but a public health, safety, and human rights issue that deserves attention. That’s why it funds these services, which play a big role in a survivor’s healing journey.
Without these protections, the woman fleeing horrible abuse in Guatemala could be told her suffering is a private matter and be sent right back to her perpetrator, where women are highest risk of being killed when trying to leave.
Since becoming law in 1994, VAWA has been linked to a significant drop in domestic violence, proving that it matters, it works, and it’s worth keeping around.
Protections Aren’t Guaranteed
Laws to protect women in our country are thinner than the paper they’re written on. They come and go as they please, unlike battered women who are repeatedly forced further and further into the darkest corners of our world.
These rights and protections are clearly not sacred, or even held in high regard, but should be permanent fixtures of our society. Our bodies are at the whim of whoever holds power – and whoever chooses to abuse it.
Every time VAWA comes up for renewal, furious debates over firearm restrictions resurface. Lawmakers (and neighbors) really seem to want abusers to keep their guns. This, of course, is ignoring the fact that access to a firearm drastically increases the risk of homicide in violent relationships, or that homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the U.S., with stronger firearm legislation linked to fewer of these preventable deaths.
Even if it’s reauthorized, VAWA depends on Congressional approval for yearly budgets, which makes it extremely vulnerable to shutdowns and funding cuts for vital resources.
And obviously there has been a shift in federal priorities this year – protecting women appears to fall under the category of “woke gender ideology”, so why should we center survivors?
Why It Matters Here
Across West Texas – yes, even in the Concho Valley – protections for asylum seekers who have survived horrific violence is not some abstract idea – It’s happening in our backyard too. It’s often the difference between a survivor having safety or having nothing. For immigrant women in our region, losing these protections at the same time as potential funding cuts to local agencies could mean more falling through the gaps.
Local housing programs, legal aid, and trauma-informed police training and victim services are directly impacted or even funded by VAWA.
San Angelo Police Department and the Tom Green County Sheriff’s Office have participated in statewide training funded in part by VAWA.
VAWA has connected organizations and helped to build partnerships between agencies to focus on survivor-centered services right here in our community.
The Big Questions
In the eyes of the United States government, is violence against women a human rights violation – or just another “private matter”? Is gender-based violence worth looking in the eye and solving, or should we shove it in the corner and pretend it doesn’t exist? At the end of the day, our answers to these questions may reflect more about today’s political climate than we’d like to admit. They may reveal to us our true humanity – or lack thereof.
Sources:
https://www.domesticshelters.org/articles/statistics/guns-and-domestic-violence
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2105/AJPH.93.7.1089
https://hub.jhu.edu/2024/09/27/violence-against-women-act-30th-anniversary
https://womenontheborder.org/2021/04/women-migrants-flee-gender-violence
