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. 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 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.

It is certainly important for parity to be made on paper, for laws and regulations to eliminate institutional sexism and to articulate specific measures to define women’s issues and disassemble systems of omission and oppression. But having a law defining and criminalizing sexual harassment alone is not enough to prevent actual harassment on the streets… not even, evidently, if that woman is the president.

Over and above improving the legal framework that girds the society where women live, it is the culture and norms of society that need to be changed if women are to be protected from inequality and violence.

By culture I mean the beliefs and way of life of a society, and by norms I mean the implicit and explicit rules that govern what is seen as moral or appropriate. While many of us can and do live our daily lives largely insulated from the direct intervention of the law, this is not the case with culture and norms. From the way we speak, to the way we move, what we aim for and what we are ashamed by, these are by and large determined by culture and norms.

That some see the reality of men harassing women as simply a natural fact of life – or worse, the proper order of things – shows the existence of cultural norms that need to be reformed. These are beliefs that have become embedded in not just men but women as well, written into the unspoken rules that can exert more insidious power than the most well-written statute, that live on in our subconscious biases even if the politically correct words come out of our lips.

The easiest way to see how thin the veneer of “progress” is, would be to see how we speak under the cloak of anonymity. On the internet, bigotry and sexism run rampant, so much so that the United Nations has made digital violence a focus point of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

“Violence against women on online platforms is, today, a serious and rapidly growing threat that seeks to silence the voices of many women – especially those with a strong public and digital presence in fields such as politics, activism or journalism,” states the UN website – but you need not take their word for it. All you need to do is look at the social media pages for prominent women and celebrities, see the chat and comments when those are enabled and not heavily moderated, and the ugly underbelly of misogyny will be laid bare for all to see. As the UN is quick to point out, digital violence is real violence, and I would add that who people are online while they are anonymous is who they most likely really are.

To change cultural norms will require constant effort from all sides. From schools and families, to call out misconceptions about perceived gender roles, and words and actions that do violence to the dignity and well-being of women. Men and women, boys and girls, all must be taught that acts such as harassment are not natural, not an immutable part of the world that must simply be accepted. The media must be aware of the biases inherent in the way it represents men and women, biases that still remain in the present as revealed by studies such as a recent one from UP that focused on the portrayal of the genders in local TV ads. Even the reporting around women’s issues can end up re-victimizing women, as President Sheinbaum pointed out in her critique of the newspaper that published images of the man groping her. Silence will always support the status quo, but even when we speak, the words must be chosen carefully.

Reforming a culture is a phenomenally difficult undertaking. But to truly safeguard women – and men, for these corrupting beliefs equate them with beasts – reform is the only path forward. Laws alone will not protect women, individual power alone will not protect women. We have seen that.

What will protect women is creating a culture where their safety is valued, where respect is the norm and empathy a way of life.