On this International Women’s Day, social media will be flooded with speeches, press releases, and hashtags about “empowerment” and “equity.” The United Nations will host panel discussions and promote another initiative in the name of “gender equality.” But these gestures, performative at best, do nothing to stop or call attention to the violence that defines reality for so many women around the world.
For decades, the multilateral institutions tasked with protecting the world’s most vulnerable women have failed them. The U.N., despite its vast resources and lofty declarations, has become an echo chamber of virtue signaling, offering words when action is required. The U.S. Agency for International Development, meanwhile, has funneled millions into progressive gender programs with little oversight, funding bureaucracies instead of security. These initiatives have done nothing to address the root causes of violence or protect women at risk. Worse, past presidential administrations have allowed ideology to erode the very definitions necessary to safeguard women’s rights.
