Who Is Really Afraid of Empowered Women?

On the history of female disobedience and the power structures it continues to threaten today

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History’s most prominent autocrats have quite a few things in common.

But apart from a fondness for splurging on grand tributes to their own legacy while the public struggles to put food on the table and an intense paranoia that drives them to eliminate anyone who so much as breathes in their direction the wrong way, most of them also share a deep-seated hatred and fear of women.

Napoléon Bonaparte, for instance, claimed that women ‘should not be regarded as the equals of men’ and described them as ‘mere machines to make children’ who ‘should be relegated to their homes.’ Treating women ‘too well,’ he wrote in his memoir, had ‘spoiled everything.’ Despite maintaining at least twenty mistresses himself, Bonaparte also decriminalised the murder of unfaithful wives.

Early twentieth-century dictators like Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Benito Mussolini similarly believed home is a woman’s supposedly ‘natural’ and ‘biological’ domain. Stalin’s sexism was more covert, veiled by Soviet rhetoric of equality, yet clearly embedded in the policy changes he championed, such as the restrictive 1936 Family Law. Mussolini, however, made no attempt to disguise his views: he openly claimed that ‘women never created anything’ and should ‘never be taken seriously.’

Luckily, the latter half of the century brought notable improvements in women’s equality in most parts of the world. But the belief that women should be kept away from positions of power and, instead, stay ‘barefoot and pregnant’ is still echoed far and wide today.

In particular, in certain segments of society.

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In 1880 in Ireland, after an especially poor harvest, British landlord Captain Charles Boycott declined to lower rents for struggling tenants and began evicting those who couldn’t pay. Outraged by Boycott’s cruelty, women cooks, maids, and other household staff employed by him left their jobs en masse, refusing to work for him. The entire community soon joined in, making it difficult for Boycott to remain in Ireland and inspiring a name for a new tactic of social noncooperation — ‘boycott.’

Despite the patriarchy’s long-standing claim that women are ‘biologically hardwired’ to be submissive and obedient, history offers countless similar examples of women challenging oppressive power structures, sparking social change and being anything but docile puppets.

In 1600, Iroquois women went on a sex strike to halt unregulated warfare — a tactic that succeeded, granting them veto power over future conflicts. Meanwhile, throughout the 17th and 18th centuries in Central and Northern Europe, women played key roles in food and tax riots. As one contemporary observer noted, ‘Women are more disposed to be mutinous (…) [and] in all public tumults they are foremost in violence and ferocity.’ One of the most prominent tax riots in the Netherlands has even gone on record as ‘The Women’s Revolt of Delft.’ Women were also instrumental in the French Revolution. In early October of 1789, tens of thousands of Parisian women ransacked the city armoury for weapons and marched to the Palace of Versailles, protesting high prices and food scarcity. This event, known as The Women’s March on Versailles, forced the royal family to return to Paris, marking one of the revolution’s most crucial turning points.

During the Industrial Revolution, working-class women continued to play an active role in demanding fair prices, higher wages, better working conditions and fighting against increased taxation that impoverished the poorest of people. One of the earliest industrial labour strikes in US history, The Lowell Mill Girls’ Strikes, was actually initiated by female textile workers in Massachusetts. The strike took place in the 1830s, when women still had virtually no rights, and half a century before the first mass movements for workers’ rights in America. Around the same time, English philanthropist Elizabeth Heyrick also launched the first-ever consumer boycott of slave-produced goods, which eventually helped inspire Britain to abolish slavery.

The twentieth century brought even more examples of female disobedience. The 1912 Bread and Roses Strike, organised by female immigrant workers in the US, stands as one of the most significant struggles in the country’s labour history. (And yet, it’s not mentioned in most history textbooks.) Over a decade later, in 1929, Nigerian Igbo women organised a massive revolt against the discriminatory policies of the British colonial state, known today as The Aba Women’s War. Women were also pivotal in mass popular movements worldwide throughout the late twentieth century, contributing to democratic transitions in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America. More recently, women-led uprisings and movements took place in Iran, Afghanistan, Poland and the US, among a few other places. 

It’s pretty clear that female anger is a force to be reckoned with. And that it has, time and again, played a vital role in opposing and dismantling not only patriarchal restrictions but also some of the world’s most repressive autocratic and colonial regimes.

In fact, research by political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks suggests that women’s involvement in struggles for democratic and egalitarian states significantly enhances a movement’s immediate success and potential for securing long-term change. In a fascinating article for Foreign Affairs, they write:

Women who participate on the frontlines of mass movements don’t just make those movements more likely to achieve their short-term objectives — for instance, removing an oppressive dictator. They also make those movements more likely to secure lasting democratic change. Controlling for a variety of other factors that might make a democratic transition more likely — such as a country’s previous experience with democracy — our analysis shows that extensive frontline participation by women is positively associated with increases in egalitarian democracy.

As Chenoweth and Marks point out, ‘women’s participation in mass movements is like a rising tide, lifting all boats.’

It’s then really not surprising that aspiring autocrats and illiberal politicians so often fear women’s empowerment. Or that we are, once again, witnessing countries around the globe put women’s rights on the chopping block.

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According to data gathered across projects measuring the state of global democracy — like the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance and the Varieties of Democracy Project at the University of Gothenburg — the past decade has seen a steady authoritarian resurgence. In 2014, around 48% of the world’s population lived under autocratic rule. Today, that figure has surged to over 70%. A total of 42 countries — most of which were previously democratic — are now caught up in a wave of autocratisation, including, for instance, Hungary, Serbia, Turkey, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

The anti-democratic sentiment is rising in some of the world’s oldest democracies, too. This has been particularly clear in the US, where the same people who profess to value ‘freedom’ are now casting votes for Donald Trump, a presidential candidate who attempted to overturn the results of a democratic election in 2020 and who openly hints this election could be the ‘last’ they need to vote in. If there were an Authoritarian Playbook, both moves would feature in Chapter 1: How to Disguise Autocracy as Freedom While Planning Your Last Election.

But there’s something else that accompanies this global democratic backsliding: the rollback of women’s rights.

And this correlation is no coincidence.

Aspiring autocrats and right-wing nationalist leaders know that free, educated, politically active women pose a direct threat to their power. This is where the mechanisms of sexist repression come in handy, such as laws that extend state control over women’s bodies — whether through forced pregnancies or forced abortions — decriminalising forms of domestic and sexual abuse, creating barriers to women’s representation in public institutions and the workforce, as well as promoting ‘traditional’ gender that ties women’s value and worth to childbearing and homemaking.

And unfortunately, this brand of patriarchal authoritarianism is visible across the globe today. In China, Xi Jinping and The Chinese Communist Party position feminism and the ‘feminisation of men’ as threats to the country’s stability while women are excluded from the highest levels of political power and instead encouraged to ‘stay home and have babies.’ In Russia, a similar ‘re-masculinisation’ campaign has been accompanied by the rollback of women’s reproductive rights, decriminalisation of forms of domestic abuse, and the glorification of ‘traditional’ values that limit women’s participation in public life. Turkey has likewise seen a decline in women’s rights, which culminated in the country’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention in 2021. Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan often argues, in language echoing his autocratic counterparts, that ‘women aren’t equal to men’ and belong at home.

In the West, patriarchal authoritarians are actively working to limit women’s freedoms as well. ‘Traditional’ values have taken centre stage in the 2024 US Republican presidential campaign, along with the notion that women must submit to men and fulfil their ‘duties.’ Just a few days ago, at a Trump rally in Georgia, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested that fathers ought to ‘vigorously spank’ their ‘hormone-addled’ daughters if they act defiantly.

What’s particularly troubling is that while autocrats and would-be autocrats have good reason to fear empowered women, they impose this sentiment — drenched in a hefty dose of misogyny and sexism — on the rest of society, especially men, who themselves have no such reason. And this has proven to be quite a successful strategy. The belief that women’s rights have ‘gone too far’ alongside the zero-sum thinking that ‘if women are gaining, men must be losing’ has become a popular cry today, despite the overwhelming amount of evidence that greater gender equality leads to lower corruption, less poverty, improved community well-being, healthier relationships, and better overall outcomes for both women and men.

Of course, and conveniently enough, in the worldview of the patriarchal authoritarian, none of this truly matters because, ultimately, men aren’t ‘real men’ unless they’re elevated above women and unless they take an active part in their subjugation, even if that means being subjugated themselves by a handful of people in power.

It’s sort of like being appointed a captain of a sinking ship. You’re going down either way, but at least you can order others around for a little while before it all ends.

But then what happens when that moment finally comes?

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We’ve already witnessed what widespread fear and prejudice against powerful, knowledgeable women can lead to in the bloody history of witch-hunts. And sadly, we’re seeing a resurgence of such dynamics today, with modern witch hunts led by those hungry for absolute power and control, aiming to beat defiance out of women — sometimes quite literally.

If women were truly submissive and fundamentally incapable of taking charge due to their inferior ‘feminine nature,’ none of this would even be necessary, wouldn’t it be? And we certainly wouldn’t own the successes of some of history’s most revolutionary movements to unruly women who refused to conform to patriarchal norms and were determined to challenge authoritarian power structures.

Even female-dominated communities are frequently much more complex than simply women exercising absolute authority over men and children. In fact, they usually demonstrate greater egalitarianism than those ruled by men.

This is also why pitting men against women is such utter nonsense.

This should’ve never devolved into a battle of the genders but rather a collective fight of men and women against exploitative and oppressive systems that prioritise the privileges of the few at the expense of the many. After all, when authoritarianism takes hold and rigid, ‘traditional’ notions of gender roles are replicated in governance institutions, oppression comes for everyone. Women become ‘mere machines to make children’, yes, but men become ‘mere machines to kill and produce value’ for their power and profit-hungry overlords.

It’s not hard to see how men who choose to hate and fear women and who rally around those promising to strip away our hard-won rights are essentially undermining their own freedom.

At the end of the day, most of us are on the same team. We’re all impacted by the continuous assault on women’s rights and freedoms, as well as by the attacks on any other marginalised group’s liberties. This isn’t a zero-sum game. This is a collaborative struggle for a better world.

To borrow a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.:

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

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One thing that gives me hope is that even when women had limited power and influence in society, they still managed to demand and expand their rights and freedoms, propelling democratic advancement in the process.

The only thing that seems actually ‘hardwired’ in many of us is a fierce resistance to oppression.

And the only people who should feel threatened by that are those who do not wish to live in a fair and just world.

Let’s not forget that.

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