Gender Rights Are Rolled Back Globally, Says Swedish ex-minister
Former Swedish minister Ann Linde warned that hard-won gender rights were being rolled back across continents, and called upon people with a progressive mindset to confront the global trend.
Hyderabad:Former Swedish minister Ann Linde warned that hard-won gender rights were being rolled back across continents, and called upon people with a progressive mindset to confront the global trend.
Addressing journalists at the Bharat Summit in Hyderabad on Thursday, she described how the proportion of women in the European Parliament had dropped for the first time since its inception, and that the pattern was repeating elsewhere.
“The decline was neither accidental nor isolated. It is part of a broader global retreat from feminist ideals, one that progressives must directly confront,” she said.
Linde, who led Sweden’s feminist foreign policy during her time in office, pushed for structural fixes over cosmetic reforms. Citing examples from trade, she explained how women’s apparel attracted disproportionately higher tariffs than men’s, without any reason except gender.
“A silk shirt for a woman could carry a tariff six times higher than its male equivalent,” she said, adding that similar discrepancies existed in sportswear and underwear. These gaps, invisible unless gender disaggregated data is studied, are symptoms of how deep bias runs.
She recalled Sweden’s work with the World Trade Organisation, where they pushed for a negotiation toolkit for women. These kinds of practical interventions, she said, must be adopted globally.
“When women are included in negotiation teams, the probability of an agreement lasting 15 years increases by 35 per cent. Still, hardly any UN-led peace missions today are headed by women.”
Linde also spoke of Sweden’s consent-based law passed in 2018, which had led to a rise in rape convictions. Legal change, she stressed, could tilt outcomes, especially in patriarchal settings where speaking up is still a risk.
Quoting Mahatma Gandhi, she traced the arc of feminist policymaking and said, “First, they laugh at you, then they ignore you, then they fight you, and then you win.”
Earlier in the day, she was also a part of the opening panel discussion on ‘Gender, Justice & a Feminist Future’. Congress leader and former Union minister Salman Khurshid responded to a question about male allyship, stating, “The problem is men, men and men; and the resolution is better men, better men and better men.”
They were joined by fellow leaders like former Union minister M.M. Pallam Raju, Panama’s women’s affairs minister Maria Alejandra Panay, Argentine socialist politician Monica Fein, Tanzanian leader Rabia Abdallah and Mongolian MP Undram Chinbat. Speakers addressed a range of concerns from unequal pay and digital gaps in Latin America to STEM education for girls and climate resilience in Mongolia’s rural belt.