International Women’s Day: Founded over a hundred years ago evolving through various names and dates, this fulcrum of women’s rights was adopted by the United Nations only in 1975 and is still largely overlooked in many countries. And still, today, in board rooms and senate chambers, in court houses as in locker rooms, now add to the list private islands, it feels we are living in highly primitive times.
Despite statistical strides made in women’s rights, everywhere around us there is uncertainty for true equality. Small victories seem rather only symbolic concessions while the general culture and practice continue to suppress essentially half of the human race.
The overturning of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade chartered a new series of initiatives rolling back women’s rights even in the so-called highly developed nations. The newest efforts to dismantle Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion have launched a witch hunt calling into question every qualified and deserving woman or minority properly gaining their place.
It is unfortunate that the perception of this struggle has been turned into a zero-sum game by some, where gains on one side are perceived as a loss to the other. This is true, but only for those whose privilege had been based on the subjugation of the other. Rather than uplifting and celebrating and moving together in progress, the losers have been punching down, or leaving the game all together and isolating to their parents’ basement dwellings – bravo for the self-quarantine of the oldest disease in the history of mankind – were it not for their double life online, continuing to diffuse their toxicity, ironically from their near inert existence.
Gains in the political sphere do not reassure. It would be too easy to criticize the misogyny. Tragically, some of the highest powered women in office are promoting a different agenda: Marine Le Pen in France, the daughter of Jean-Marie of the former the National Front; Meloni in Italy, the sister of the Brotherhood; Alessandra Mussolini, member of the European Parliament for Forza Italia and needs no introduction; Roberta Metsola, the president of the European Parliament, with her categorical view against female reproductive rights.
The women of the current U.S. administration, surprisingly high in number are equally disappointing in their function as loyalists, with prominent figures including Pam Bondi, Attorney General, misunderstanding her responsibility of protecting victims by protecting the offenders; Alina Habba, formerly personal attorney to Trump, illigally appointed as U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, now Counselor to the President; Lindsey Halligan facing now a similar fate in Florida; Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, now left with a warehouse full of T-shirts that say No War with Iran; Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, just let go following her responses to the ICE fiascos; Susie Wiles, Chief of Staff, who revealed quite a bit with Vanity Fair, a poignant interview drafted over nearly a dozen sessions throughout the administration’s first year – an exposé normalizing the dystopia and the dysfunctions of the ruling family, Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary, whose only transparency is in her title…. All, supposedly promoting America first family values too often at odds with women’s rights, reaffirm progress only in numbers. Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion snuffed out, and in its place, loyalist spokespeople without any challenge to the old agenda. As a collective they represent an extension of their counterpart’s power, if only their particular counterpart in question were not one of their greatest offenders. The meaning of Irony works overtime when the bombing of a girls’ school becomes vying for the Noble Peace Prize.
Thusly furnishing our governments with some of its greatest assailants, laws which protected women’s rights have been unravelling. Today in the U.S., it’s okay for a member of Congress to drive a minor across state lines to evade conviction on statutory rape; but it is illegal for that same girl to drive across state lines to seek health care to address the very violation.
Despite the seeming rise of empowerment, the image of women on social media still points to something unbelievable. Now with AI, prompted by men and money, the market is trending to diffuse media that glorifies misogyny and gratifies the most base of our instincts, cloning an army of virtual influencers to subjugate the minds and bodies of young girls early on with ideas of such degradation shown as success, a kind of digital incubation for trafficking victims, and teaching our boys not to become real men.
With such a basic principle of Equality and Respect, it should be quite elementary. And yet, so many fear that the smallest concession would be entering the slippery slope of – God forbid – doing good and what is right.
Since Artpil’s founding, we covered the #MeToo movement, traced the Elimination of Violence Against Women and counted down to the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the sometimes overlooked World Day of Social Justice. More recently during Covid, we covered The Shadow Pandemic. With the world in constant crisis, sometimes it is easy to forget. But these things are all interconnected.
Often our better halves, and without whom we could not be, we renew our commitment to engage. Welcome to the 171st edition of Prescriptions, and happy International Women’s Day. Once again, we celebrate the women who have inspired and created in the art world.
International Women’s Day / 2026
March 8, 2026
Artpil / Prescription 171
Matthew Hong
