Dr. Kim Ozano: Hello and welcome to Connecting Citizens to Science.

I'm your host, Dr. Kim Ozano, and this episode marks the start of a six-part

mini-series exploring gender backlash.

This series sounds a little bit different to our usual episodes where

we are focusing on health systems, but we know from conversations across this

podcast and across our disciplines that nothing happens in isolation.

Gender justice, political power, and access to services like

healthcare are all deeply connected.

If we wanna build more effective equitable health systems, we have to

understand these intersections, and this episode aims to do just that.

Nay El Rahi: Generally, a generic definition of backlash is that

it is a reaction to perceived or real gains made by the feminist

movement or any social movement.

Dr. Kim Ozano: We are seeing that around the world, moments of crisis,

whether economic, political, or environmental have become fertile

ground for patriarchal resurgence.

From austerity measures that disproportionately impact women, to the

rise of controlling governments rolling back gender rights, crisis is serving as

a justification to reinforce traditional gender norms and limit freedoms.

This episode investigates how different forms of crisis fuel anti-feminist

backlash in the Global South, how masculinity is weaponised in moments

of instability, and the strategies that activists are using to resist.

I'm joined in this series by Ishrat Jahan, who is a research fellow at the Center

for Gender and Sexual and Reproductive Health at BRAC, James P. Grant School

of Public Health in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Ishrat, as one of our co-hosts for this min-series, will help

us to explore the work of two long-term cross-country initiatives.

The first is Countering Backlash, Reclaiming Justice, which explores

how patriarchal backlash is mobilised across six countries.

The second is Our Voices, Our Futures a Global South led project that centers

the experiences of structurally silenced women, including sex workers, Indigenous

women, and women human rights defenders.

Ishrat's research has been published in journals and books on gender

justice, climate change, and sexual and reproductive health, and we're

pleased to have her with us today to help us unpack these critical themes

and to amplify the voices of those most affected by gender backlash.

We also have two guests joining us today, Nay El Rahi, who is a

Lebanese journalist and Alfred Makabira, a programme coordinator at

Advocates for Social Change in Kenya.

Both our guests are navigating the realities of gender backlash

in their own lives and work.

This episode is a reminder that gender justice is a public health issue, and

that inequality takes collective action.

Ishrat welcome to the podcast.

It's great to have you here as a co-host to guide us through this mini-series.

I think to help us understand gender justice a little bit more and why

this mini-series is needed now more than ever, talk to us about

some of the principles and concepts that we need to be thinking about.

Thank you, Kim.

I'm really excited to talk about gender justice.

I think when we talk about gender justice, we are talking about much more than quote

unquote 'achieving equality on paper'.

It's about transforming systems that we live in every day, and it's about

recognising how different traits and characteristics intersect with each other

to create different kinds of inequalities for men, women, what have you.

And working on gender justice is about working to tackle those

intersecting kinds of oppression.

It's not just about one thing, gender is something we live with, we live in.

And just to put in a little bit of context to what I'm saying, the World

Economic Forum's Global Gender gap report in 2024 stated that it'll take

1 34 years to reach gender parity.

The UN states that in 2024, 1 in 4 countries have reported

backlash on women's rights.

And I guess we also don't need these statistics to see it.

We are already seeing a rise in kinds of power, which is trying to strip years and

years of hard-earned gender justice gains.

This series is about digging deeper into the why of it, and more importantly,

it's about listening to people.

It's listening to people's stories and voices, whether they're researchers and

activists, whether they themselves are women who are structurally excluded from

the society, young people navigating really deep social and political

crisis across the Global South.

And I think it's very important we come together and listen to those stories.

Dr. Kim Ozano: Well, we're certainly happy to provide a platform for that.

So, what I'm hearing is it's about transforming systems of exclusion.

I really like that, and this is for everyone to address no matter

what discipline you are from.

And you're right, 134 years is far too long, and I believe you're

already working on two programmes that are trying to counter this

backlash from one in four countries.

That's really quite astounding.

So, talk us through the two programmes.

Yes, of course.

So, the series draws on research and stories from two long-term

gender justice projects.

One is Countering Backlash and Reclaiming Gender Justice, and the

other one is Our Voices, Our Futures.

Countering Backlash aims to create much needed knowledge around the complex

phenomena of patriarchal backlash and identifying opportunities for women's

rights organisations and other gender justice defenders to address the

erosion of gender objectives within development and counter gender backlash.

The programme's main countries of focus are Bangladesh, Brazil,

India, Kenya, Lebanon, and Uganda.

It's a six-year work programme that's funded by Sida.

Our Voices, Our Future is a Global South led initiative to amplify the

voices of structurally silenced women across Bangladesh, India, Kenya,

Lebanon, Sudan and Uganda, and this is funded by the Embassy of Netherlands,

and it's coordinated by CERA.

And I'm really excited to have two guests with me here today.

We have Nay El Rahi.

She's a Lebanese journalist, researcher, activist.

She wears many hats, and mainly she's the lead researcher at the Arab Institute of

Women in the Lebanese American University.

And we also have with us Alfred Makabira, he's the programme

coordinator for ADSOCK Kenya.

Thank you both for joining us today.

I think the first, not question, but food for thought that I have for you, is

that I want to know a bit more about what you think is the relationship between

the rising far right power and politics that we are seeing globally, and the way

in which it's affecting gender justice.

Nay El Rahi: before I answer this question, Ishrat, I would like to

just preface this by saying I am a Lebanese researcher and an activist,

and I've worked with the Arab Institute for Women for over five years now.

I am currently based in Canada, working on my PhD in anthropology, but my

entire life I've grappled with tensions around feminist activism and political

activism and how the two together work in the context of Lebanon, and I

would say ever since we started this project, my problem was always the

fact that backlash as a concept is, is parachuted on contexts like ours.

So, generally a generic definition of backlash is that it is a reaction

to perceived or real gains made by the feminist movement or any social

movement, but like on gender mostly if we're talking about anti-feminist

backlash, and in Lebanon we come from a baseline where women and other

marginalised groups is already frail.

The state in Lebanon, it's sextarian, in the fact that it uses sex and

religious sect to organise political life and to organise life in the country.

And it's also an epidermal state, which means it enacts its sovereignty

and its power on, on people's actual identities, their sex, their gender,

their legal status their class.

All of this matters in their positioning.

And so the state has always been violent and sovereign, violent essentially

to, to these communities, to women, to the incarcerated, to sex workers, to

refugees, to migrant domestic workers.

So, in that sense this discussion on far right, and whether this is new or whether

this is triggered by any movement on the geopolitical scene, I wouldn't say

it's irrelevant, but I would say it's less relevant to a context like Lebanon.

Which is why we say backlash is a legacy of structures.

And that's the context in which I'm gonna position this conversation.

I can relate to it a lot, given that when I first started

working on this project, a lot of it would feel like I'm already starting

at a baseline where there's a lot of rights and accessibility not granted to

women, a lot about gender justice is not present within the Bangladesh context.

So, what does it really mean when there's a rise of far right power when

rights for women, for others, have always not been there or been resisted.

Alfred M. Makabira: I do concur to some extent because uh, in our context in

Africa, let me be specific to my country, Kenya, and most of our communities

are very patriarchal in nature.

The social norms from that traditional African, perspective where there's a clear

definition of uh, what a man should be doing and what a woman should be doing.

I would say that we recently have started seeing the reemergence of what

traditionally used to be considered to be truly African in terms of

rights, and more so when it comes to women, and girls and men and boys,

and of course when it comes to the minority communities and populations.

There's a resurgence of that traditional aspect.

And we've seen people being pushed to the corner and especially members

of the LGBT community and also women who are proving that indeed women can

also rise up to the occasion in terms of leadership and decision making.

They are facing a lot of opposition and especially from cultural, religious and

administrative leaders in some areas where people do feel that the woman should

go back to the traditional role of home keeping and ensuring that the children are

well taken care of and their husband also.

Of late we've had people, influencers online.

We have a number of influencers who are actually, coming out strongly and they

are fanning this kind of backlash online.

They're really taking advantage of the space to push these aggressive agenda.

And sad to say that there are drones of people actually who are rallying along and

helping them advance this divisive agenda.

In our country for instance, religion is being used to a greater

extent to push the agenda of trying to stick to the traditional

roles of the man and the woman.

And also, politically, I would like to say that the government that we have in place,

it came into power on the platform of uh, being religious and actually, this has

worked negatively when it comes to pursuit of the rights and more so of women.

So, the political arena intertwined with the religion, and of course the

traditional cultural norms in our society, they're really playing a

pivotal role in terms of pushing the way that we Kenyans perceive issues

of gender justice and equality.

In terms of what's happening on the global space and how it's impacting,

gender justice efforts in our country.

I'll say that one.

There's a lot of panic as we speak.

Because of the decisions that are being made in the Global North in

terms of, say, for instance financing for efforts to promote gender

justice on this side of the globe.

And that in itself is really causing a lot of, helter skelter here and there

as the shrinking economic space and the funding basket is running dry.

thank you, Alfred.

I think that's a very important point you bring up and your point actually

puts into mind the fact that in times of crisis we always see this return to

traditional roles being a point that's redoubled, whether it's by politicians,

whether it's by religious leaders, and I think it happens across contexts.

Along with all those things that you mentioned that's happening in Kenya,

and I can also relate on some level from a Bangladesh context, I think

what also happens is there's also a glorification of a hyper-masculinity

or the traditional man as well.

And that, trans-nationally, or across global context as we are seeing,

it plays a very key role in shaping what's the right kind of gender to

be or what's the right kind of ideas of gender we can hold and, I wanted

to get your thoughts on that as well.

If you think there is a relationship that you see between this hyper-masculinis

ation of far-right power or power in general, and the way in which

that affects the kinds of ideas we can have around gender justice.

Alfred M. Makabira: Yeah, what I would say is that hypermasculinity is really

taking centre stage in terms of say for instance trying to socialise the, the

Kenyan boy because uh, people feel that with all the efforts that have been put

into the discourse to promote gender justice, there are those, and more so

the older generation, who feel that there's been, a masculation of the man

and the boy to some degree, and therefore there are those coming out strongly

and shouting from the rooftops that we need to take back the man and the boy

to the initial hyper-masculine nature.

And uh, you know, in our context traditionally it's considered the more

aggressive the man is, the better.

Dr. Kim Ozano: These concepts are really important for us to understand

and I'm certainly learning quite a lot.

I wondered if you could comment on how the political economic framing that is clearly

very important to the backlash movement, translates to the health outcomes

for different genders and how you've seen that already start to play out.

Nay El Rahi: if I am to speak about the Lebanese context, I would say there

is a general disintegration of the services of the, the infrastructure

around services, health included.

And certainly, there's a discrepancy in how this affects men and women.

I wouldn't say it doesn't affect men.

I would say it affects men and women differently in a sense that

it's the women who are shouldering the care burden of the household.

Dr. Kim Ozano: Ishrat, are you finding the same in Bangladesh?

I think yes, there's a lot coming up for women's health

and access to health services in terms of the crisis we experience.

I think a point worthwhile adding to this is that we don't have a lot of

light shed on the way in which these kinds of practices of hyper-masculinities

affect men's health and men's wellbeing especially young boys.

It's invisibilised to a point and I say this after having looked at men's everyday

experiences for the past three years, especially men in informal settlements.

For them, it's about moving from one crisis to another crisis.

A lot of the times their mental wellbeing is pretty much

left out of the conversation.

So, I think of course, crisis driven backlash is going to affect women's

rights and health and wellbeing.

But it's also important to see the way in which this glorification of

being the right kind of man will also drive men further into being

invisible in health and healthcare.

Alfred M. Makabira: Uh, With the current economic situation, you find that

families have lesser resources, for instance, to seek healthcare and

therefore in our context again let me point out that women and children are

taking a toll when it comes to seeking healthcare, but also men are not spared

because given that hyper-masculine man that we talked about, the traditional

African man, they normally say that in the society that a man should not seek

medical attention for things like flu or a cold or even a headache for that matter.

And therefore there are masculinity issues also playing out.

And it's affecting also the men.

Dr. Kim Ozano: This has been a really great conversation about

how these backlash approaches do have an impact and are intersected

with different types of crises.

So, I think this is a good time to bring out strategies for resistance and feminist

responses to these crisis driven backlash.

Nay, let's start with you please.

Nay El Rahi: So, I would give two quick tips.

I would say, in terms of feminist activism, I would borrow from

feminist activism in Lebanon that's been extremely agile over the years.

The fact that when there's a general environment of lawlessness and an

increase in violation and an increase in violence, the women openly and in public

spaces, feminist activism, which would retreat to like physical spaces to from

the physical space to the online space.

And when there's a crisis in the country, the feminists are often

the ones to be at the forefront.

Often like it's compensation for the absence of the state.

And so, this agility marks feminist activism in Lebanon, and I'm sure in

so many other places in the Global South and in the world, I would say.

And the second, and I think equally important point is to keep our eyes

focused on the bigger picture, on the general structures to keep it political.

This isn't a war on women.

This is a war on all of us.

There's like a minority, oligarchic minority in the world that wants to

instate an agenda that's gonna harm all of us; the climate, the planet, women,

children, queers, refugees, everyone.

So, I think keeping that in mind would sharpen our tools, would

sharpen the way we see things.

And would also facilitate our solidarity across, across the board.

Dr. Kim Ozano: I really like that idea of sharpening the tools.

This isn't just about women, it's about everyone, and coming

together and having that solidarity.

I think that's a really excellent point.

Alfred, some advice for others out there that are really looking

to have these feminist responses to crisis driven backlash.

Alfred M. Makabira: We need to develop the counter narratives that exposes the

manipulative nature of gender rhetoric and highlights the positive gains that

are there in gender equality, not just for women and girls and the minorities,

but also for ordinary men like, like me.

And then there's also the need for us to engage in ensuring that we strengthen

the voice of the feminist movement and institutions as well as networks.

And here I would really like us to put to the core the need for interagency

collaboration, bringing on board the state and non-state actors with a name

of pushing the agenda of gender justice.

And then lastly, it's important for us as actors to ensure that we promote

media literacy and we equip individuals, with the skills and knowledge to

critically be able to analyse the message that they come across in the digital

platform and fish out the negatives.

Dr. Kim Ozano: Fantastic.

Thank you so much.

So Ishrat, take us home with one final piece of advice

to leave for our listeners.

I think I just wanna leave our listeners and all of us with thought

that, if crisis can be imagined as spaces where the traditional values are

going to be anchored, I think they can also be reimagined as a space where our

collective resistance can grow and where feminist responses are not just happening

in silo and not just for women, for men, but feminist responses that cut across

issues, address climate change, address deep economic and political crisis.

And I think that's something that we all need to keep in mind.

Dr. Kim Ozano: Thank you so much.

It's been a really stimulating conversation and a great

message to finish on.

Thank you to our guests and to all of you for joining us for this first conversation

in our gender justice series, we've heard how gender backlash takes many

forms, that it's shaped by politics, culture, and crisis, and how resisting

it requires collective action that goes beyond any one sector or discipline.

Next time we'll shift our focus to another structurally silenced

group, sex workers in Bangladesh.

As shrinking civic spaces and increasing surveillance disproportionately affect

structurally silenced communities.

The impacts on health, wellbeing and access to support systems are

profound, particularly for sex workers.

It's a conversation that reminds us how marginalisation is experienced,

not just through stigma and criminalisation, but through health

harming exclusions from safe housing, and protection to mental health

support and protection from violence.

We hope you'll join us for that conversation.

For now, stay curious and thanks for listening to

Connecting Citizens to Science.