The US imperialist war on Iran has brought to the forefront the insidious way women’s rights are weaponised by the West to justify wars of aggression and to spread Islamophobia. But the weaponisation of women’s rights is something which touches women in every country and we need to look at this issue closely in order to understand why the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has been compelled to acknowledge that instead of “mainstreaming equal rights, we are seeing the mainstreaming of misogyny.”

He made this observation on the occasion of the release of the UN report “Women’s Rights in Review 30 Years After Beijing”, published in 2025. The report shows that since 1995, countries have enacted 1,531 legal reforms advancing gender equality, maternal mortality has dropped by a third and women’s representation in parliaments has more than doubled. 

However, all these gains have slowed down but there is a reversal in the gains of women’s rights world over due to international factors such as the effect of the Covid pandemic, soaring food and fuel prices, and the undermining of democratic institutions by conflicts and wars. The UN Report documents how the backlash on women’s rights has led to a woman or girl is killed every 10 minutes by a partner or member of her own family. Digital technology and artificial intelligence spread harmful stereotypes, while the digital gender gap limits women’s opportunities.

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The UN does not speak of “weaponisation of women’s rights” but usually speaks of “weaponisation of gender” especially in context of non-State parties or of repressive regimes in the Global South but seldom in the context of imperialist wars by USA and its allies. Here I focus on the way the US (and its allies) have been responsible for the mainstreaming of misogyny through a process a weaponisation of women’s rights.

What does weaponisation of women’s rights actually mean? Broadly, it means to use the language of “protecting women,” “gender equality,” or “saving women” as a political tool to pursue other agendas—wars, sanctions, communal mobilisation, border control, or authoritarian consolidation—rather than to genuinely transform women’s lives.

Although weaponization of women’s rights is a part of the history of patriarchy this tool has been used most effectively in the so-called War against Terror launched by the US in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in New York. 

First Lady Laura Bush in a radio address on November 17, 2001, declared that the war on terrorism was also “a fight for the rights and dignity of women,” explicitly linking the invasion of Afghanistan to the liberation of Afghan women from Taliban rule: “Good morning. I’m Laura Bush, and I’m delivering this week’s radio address to kick off a world-wide effort to focus on the brutality against women and children by the al-Qaida terrorist network and the regime it supports in Afghanistan, the Tablian. That regime is now in retreat........

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