Extract:
According to women’s rights attorney Dr. Ann Olivarius, the current rollback of women’s rights across multiple fronts from the overturning of Roe v. Wade to the federal government and corporations dismantling DEI policies, is a wake up call for women to continue to fight back.
Olivarius has spent more than four decades fighting for women who have faced workplace discrimination and sexual assault. As a 21-year-old student at Yale, she helped lead the landmark Alexander v. Yale case, which established that sexual harassment in education violates Title IX. The case forced universities to take responsibility for protecting students, something now at risk under today’s legal and political climate.
As a veteran of the feminist legal movement, Olivarius has been at the forefront of major legal and cultural shifts, including coining the term “date rape” and advocating for revenge porn laws. She currently leads McAllister Olivarius, a transatlantic law firm fighting for survivors in cases ranging from corporate discrimination to sexual violence by religious cult leaders.
In my recent conversation with Olivarius, we discussed what women can do in today’s environment to counter the movement limiting women’s rights.
The current environment
“In America, women’s rights expanded continually since the beginning of the 20th century, picking up speed after the 1950s. We are now suffering a major backlash. Our legal and political reversal is reflected in changing cultural attitudes – according to a new Pew Survey, in 2022, 28% of Republican men thought women should return to “traditional roles”. In 2024 that had risen to 48%, almost half. Republican women have gone from 22% to 37%.”
According to Olivarius, “We are fighting back in a rapidly changing and increasing polarized environment. That’s both a challenge and opportunity. The challenge is that a growing subset of the populations claims to be explicitly more ideologically opposed to our goals of equality. The opportunity is that those we are now seemingly fighting to curtail their own rights haven’t yet experienced living without them.”