Dismantling the 21st Century Woman: Why Conservatives Are Repealing Women's Rights

The 21st Century Woman: Why Conservatives Are Repealing Women's Rights

The 21st-century woman has choices. Choices to opt out of motherhood. Choices to further her education. Choices to own brands and run companies. The 21st-century woman has options that work against the ideology of the patriarchy.

The systematic assault against women has always been an ongoing fight since the beginning of time. Where there is progress, opposition lingers on the other side, waiting with a wrecking ball. Women who have fought for more are still fighting, with the pressing need to do so today.

The Quiet Rollback of Women's Rights

The systematic dismantling of women's rights, particularly in the United States. From abortion bans to attacks on reproductive healthcare, from the rollback of equal pay protections to attempts to limit women's autonomy over their own bodies, conservatives are not merely preserving traditional values. They are actively attempting to reverse decades of progress.

This isn't about a difference in policy. It's about power. And the target is clear: the empowered, autonomous woman of the 21st century.

Control Masquerading as Morality

Conservative efforts are often cloaked in the language of morality, family values, and protection of life. But beneath that veneer lies a familiar agenda—control. Bans on abortion don't protect life; they endanger women. Removing access to reproductive care doesn't promote health; it strips women of agency.

The real motive isn't moral clarity—it's the reinforcement of a patriarchal system where women's choices are not their own.

The Economic Undermining of Women

The attack isn't just on bodily autonomy. Economic autonomy is under siege as well. Efforts to undermine workplace protections, weaken maternity leave laws, and oppose affordable childcare legislation disproportionately harm women. The goal? To tether women's economic security to dependence on men, family structures, and systems that see them as secondary.

A truly empowered woman is a threat to outdated systems. So those systems adapt—not by evolving, but by suppressing her.

Erasing Progress by Targeting the Margins

The rollback of women's rights doesn't affect all women equally. Black, brown, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, disabled, and low-income women are hit first and hardest. By attacking access points like healthcare clinics and public education, conservatives are using systemic inequity as a wedge to divide and conquer. If they can dismantle progress at the margins, they can destabilize it for everyone.

What we're witnessing is not just regression—it's strategic erasure. From book banning to erasing marginalized figures from websites and defunding public schools, the attacks are aggressive. Many of these efforts are simply to regulate information and push women back into the home full-time. 

The Cultural War on Feminism

In conservative media and political rhetoric, feminism has become a dirty word. It's the boogeyman in religious spaces, which also plays a role in dismantling the 21st-century woman. Advocates for equality are labeled radical, anti-family, or worse. The 21st-century woman, who dares to be vocal, ambitious, sexually autonomous, and economically independent, is painted as a villain in a cultural war that pits her against "tradition." Trad wife content is thriving for a reason.

Feminism was never about erasing tradition. It was about choice. It was about providing girls and women with opportunities to create the lives they wanted for themselves. And it is precisely that choice conservatives now fear.

What We Stand to Lose

This moment is not just about specific laws. It's about the soul of our society. It is about the future being cemented for young girls. The question is not whether women should have rights but whether they are fully human in the eyes of men. A nation that rescinds those rights piece by piece is a nation in decline.

We must ask ourselves: What does it mean for democracy when half the population is treated as expendable and as appliances in pursuit of an ideological fantasy?

Resistance In Unity

Despite these attacks, women are resisting—organizing, voting, running for office, and raising their voices louder than ever. The battle for women's rights has always been long and unequal. That was made clearer with 92% of Black women voting in an attempt to salvage democracy, while others voted for the party that is burning it to the ground.

History has shown that when women rise, they reshape the world. The question is not whether women can withstand this assault. The question is whether all women, no matter their differences, will fight together for a better world.