Okay so social movements empower women worldwide and right now I’m sitting cross-legged on my bed in Chicago with the ceiling fan making that annoying wobble-click sound it always does when the power’s a bit low. It’s almost 7 pm, the street outside is doing its usual honk-scream routine, my room smells like incense I lit two hours ago and then forgot about, and I’m just… thinking way too hard about this topic again.
I keep coming back to it because sometimes it feels huge and hopeful and sometimes it feels like we’re all screaming into the same void and nothing changes. Last week I was doomscrolling at 2 a.M. (bad habit, I know) and saw clips from the latest women’s safety protests in delhi and then right after some footage from iran still circulating and then american abortion rights rallies and my brain just went nope too much at once. I closed the app, stared at the dark ceiling, and felt simultaneously connected to every woman in those videos and also completely useless because what am I actually doing besides feeling things?
The part where social movements empower women even when it’s not pretty
Social movements empower women worldwide mostly through the slow grind nobody wants to instagram. It’s showing up when you’re tired, when your feet hurt, when you’re scared your parents will find out, when you get shouted at by uncles on the street for holding a placard. I remember the first (and honestly only) protest I ever properly went to — it was one of those candlelight things for a rape case back in college. I wore my oldest salwar because I didn’t want to ruin anything nice, held a candle that kept dripping wax on my fingers, and spent half the time panicking that someone I knew would see me and tell my family. Glamorous? No. Empowering? Weirdly yes.
It’s the same energy I see in so many places. In iran women still posting hair-cutting videos years after the first wave, In poland the older women knitting red lightning bolts for abortion rights, In the us the teenagers organizing walk-outs after yet another school shooting. None of it is clean or linear. There are fights inside the movements, people drop out, funding dries up, trolls win sometimes. But the thread keeps going.
Tiny real ways social movements empower women (that actually happen to normal people)
- You finally say “no” to that creepy relative at a family function because you’ve seen too many posts saying it’s okay to set boundaries
- A friend messages you at 11 pm saying “I left him” and you know she found the courage from some whatsapp group that started as a meme page but turned into real support
- You start noticing how every news channel has at least one woman anchor now and even if they’re still asked stupid questions sometimes, it wasn’t like that when I was a kid
But also: I still catch myself staying quiet in some family chats because “peace” feels easier. So yeah. Work in progress. Always.
The ugly honest part nobody wants to admit
Social movements empower women worldwide until the backlash hits and then it feels like two steps forward, five steps back, one step sideways into despair. Afghanistan still hurts to think about. The way gains can disappear so fast. Here in india we have new laws, new schemes, more women in metros driving cabs and coding apps, but then you read about another honour killing or acid attack and it’s like… are we even moving?
And I’m not innocent either. I’ve shared a post and felt good about myself then gone back to binge-watching shows instead of signing the next petition. I’ve argued with someone online about feminism and then realised halfway through I was repeating something I read without really understanding the context. Embarrassing. Human. Exhausting.
The random stubborn wins that keep me from completely giving up
Still, social movements empower women in ways that sneak up and stay. More girls in my colony are going to coaching classes for engineering now because they saw role models online. My cousin who used to never speak in family meetings now interrupts uncles when they talk over her. Period-leave policies getting talked about seriously in some offices. Little cracks where light gets in.
Reports from places like un women show that countries with active feminist organising usually end up with better laws over ten–fifteen years. Not overnight. Not perfectly. But directionally better. That tiny graph keeps the part of me that wants to quit from winning completely.
So yeah. That’s where I’m at tonight. Social movements empower women worldwide in this lurching, imperfect, sometimes-heartbreaking, sometimes-hilarious way. They don’t fix everything. They don’t make anyone a saint. But they do make space for more of us to be louder, braver, messier versions of ourselves.
