The Pussyhat Resistance

Who would have thought that over the span of ten years, what started as a 15-second social media platform could mobilize millions of women around the world towards the future of gender equality?

In the late-2010s, a considerable number of feminist movements emerged in the Western hemisphere, particularly in the United States and gained momentum worldwide amid a changing political landscape.

When millions of people stormed the streets in women’s marches to proclaim their outrage and despair at the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, no one knew whether it was a moment or a movement. Pink hats became the emblem of the marches, as a reference to Mr. Trump’s comments, caught on tape, bragging about kissing women and grabbing their genitals without their consent. The emergence of the tape just before the election provoked an outpouring of women testifying about sexual harassment under the #MeToo and #TimesUp hashtag.

Without knowing it, the so-called Women’s March started to shape a new form of feminism over the course of the following decade: the Pussyhat Resistance, a coalition of empowered women worldwide focused on raising awareness about women's issues and advancing human rights by promoting dialogue and innovation through the arts, education and intellectual discourse.

The TPR movement catharsis than clarity. Its full statement of principles runs more than 1,000 words and includes issues ranging from reproductive rights to gender justice, from the minimum wage to immigration reform, from clean water to criminal profiling to arming police with military-grade weaponry.

“It’s messy, and that’s the beauty of it,” one of its founders said in an interview through Twitter.

The Pussyhat Resistance resembles the second-wave of physical and radical activism. Generally, second-wave feminism is defined by an active political fight that requires the disruption of power structures through participation in public demonstrations against patriarchal suppression.

Advances in global education, health and technology have helped empower individuals like never before, leading to increased demands for transparency and participation in government and public decision-making. These changes will continue and are ushering in a new era in human history in which, in the immediate short term, more people will be middle class than poor, bolstered by the demographic boom in Sub-Saharan and North Africa, Southeast Asia and India.

Today, in 2032 and despite major commitments and important progress made, women’s universal human rights are still far from a reality today. Patriarchal, authoritarian, economic and social norms, beliefs, structures, and systems perpetuate inequality, human rights violations, and environmental destruction - while disproportionately affecting women.

In 2022, China joined Canada, Mexico, The United States and Sweden by stepping up and explicitly labeling their development assistance and foreign policy as feminist. Over the past two decades, there have been significant improvements for women and girls — particularly in the areas of health and education.

So far, over 100 countries have taken actions to track budget allocations for gender equality. However, tangible laws to ensure that women can have equitable access to opportunities seem blurry and distant.

A group of 2,000 people —90 per cent of whom were women— across seven regions in Albania developed community-based scorecards in 2024. Using the newly launched WhatsApp For Communities, their collaborative work rated how well their communities are doing in involving women in public decision-making, stopping gender-based violence, advancing women’s economic well-being and providing social services.

In 2025, a group of 300 women under the name the Noun Sisters in Cameroon came together to support single mothers who protested against the practice of forced, early marriages. The protests were sparked when a widowed, 17-year-old mother was last week being forced to marry her dead husband’s brother. The marriage was called off after the demonstrations, organized through Facebook.

Bolivia’s Congress legalised abortions up to the 14th week of pregnancy in 2026, a ground-breaking move for a country that has some of the world's most restrictive termination laws. Thousands of women took the street to emulate Argentina’s “green tide” movement that helped deliver sweeping abortion reform in one of Latin America’s most Catholic countries, with 94% religious' majority. Until now, abortions were only permitted in cases of rape or when the mother's health was at risk.

During 2028, local activist Gauri Saudar went viral on TikTok when more than half a million women In the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh showed up to a 5-day strike demanding for better working conditions. In there, a bull works 1,064 hours, a man 1,212 hours, and a woman 3,845 hours in a year on a one-hectare farm. In India or the South Asian narrative, women’s work doubles as they not only contribute heavily on the field but also take care of the household, thus making them more profit generators than the men. Yet the share of land, profit and income is low in comparison with men.

Shortly after, a massive women protest in China in 2030 demanded immediate family planning solutions and maternal health, looking to expand the number of health workers and develop emergency services and maternal-health services in rural areas. Alibaba offered to voluntarily improve supply chains for the delivery of contraceptives and expanding sex education in schools are also important measures.

What's happening now feels like something new again. It's defined by technology: tools that are allowing women to build a strong, popular, reactive movement online. Online is where activists meet and plan their activism, and it’s where feminist discourse and debate takes place. Digital tools have multiplied collective power around the world. And it’s here to stay.

Sources

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-with-hunger-games-mockingjay-part-2-theaters-katniss-feminism-lawrence-20151119-story.html

https://www.tor.com/2012/03/21/why-katniss-is-a-feminist-character-and-its-not-because-she-wields-a-bow-and-beats-boys-up/#:~:text=When%20Katniss%20befriends%20Rue%2C%20she,in%20the%20face%20of%20oppression.&text=While%20Katniss%20is%20analytical%20and,she's%20often%20incapacitated%20by%20it.

https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/leadership-and-political-participation/womens-movements

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/13/pandemic-womens-movement-social-media-internet-activism/

https://www.vox.com/2018/3/20/16955588/feminism-waves-explained-first-second-third-fourth

https://home.kpmg/xx/en/home/insights/2013/10/rise-of-the-individual.html