“Not on our watch.”
By: Inbal Rief
Tags: Dataviz, Equality, Women, Womens Rights, Covid 19

Sunday, March 8, 2020, marked International Women’s Day, a day of celebrating women’s achievements and a gender-equal world. This year’s theme was “I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights”, and despite the pandemic, it was the most active yet, with 393 events spanning 56 countries. From marches in Pakistan and Mexico to demonstrations in Kyrgyzstan and Turkey, thousands of women took the streets demanding greater rights and denouncing violence against women. Japan was the third most active country with 42 ‘Peaceful Protests’, all of which were part of the Flower Demo Movement.

The movement began in March 2019, when a series of acquittals in four sexual assault cases sparked outrage over the legal standard for sexual assault and rape in Japan. In one case, despite the court recognizing that a father physically and sexually abused his daughter, he was acquitted because there was doubt as to whether she was incapable of resisting.

Since then, on the 11th of every month, women gather holding flowers, a symbol of empathy, to speak about their own experiences of sexual violence and urge reforms to Japan’s criminal code. The purpose of the movement can be summarized in the words of Akiko Matsuo, one of its core organizers, “Talking about our unchangeable past will surely change the future.”

The Flower Demo Movement has spread to all 47 prefectures and regions in Japan, with around 1,500 people coming together monthly on average, and has already begun to galvanize reform. For example, the Ministry of Justice announced that they will establish an investigative commission to deliberate penal code revisions pertaining to sexual crimes.

Moved to coincide with International Women’s Day, flower demos occurred in 42 prefectures and cities in Japan on March 8, 2020. It also marked the first anniversary and final gathering of the official Flower Demo. “Today marked an end of a chapter of the (movement), but it is not the end,” said Minori Kitahara, an author and one of the organizers of the demonstration. “Now, it’s society’s turn to change.”

“Who knows what women can be when they are finally free to become themselves?”

When the first reports of COVID-19 cases reached us, we didn’t expect it to spiral into a global pandemic that would profoundly alter our everyday lives. While some of us are struggling with the isolation, household concerns, or the mere discomfort of wearing masks everywhere we go, others, particularly women in countries engaged in sociopolitical crises, are facing severe gender-based discrimination and violence during this time.

With lockdowns and quarantines, we thought there would be less political activity in the COVID-19 Pandemic Burst. We thought wrong. Women were strikingly more active during this challenging period than in the similar period last year. From a two million strong march on International Women’s Day in Chile to protests against femicide in Turkey, women continued to fight for gender equality.

On the flip side, we thought our world would come together in the interest of protecting fundamental human rights, security, health, and economic development. But again, we thought wrong. The world kept turning and violence did not cease despite the pandemic. Violent attacks by gangs in Central and South America, sectarian violence in India, armed conflict in Africa and the Middle East, and other isolated incidents resulted in 360 fatalities in just 106 days.

While the data do demonstrate both uplifting and alarming trends in political protests and violence, respectively, it should be noted that certain events featuring women are not reflected. First, the ACLED data capture political events featuring women or women’s issues and political violence targeting women, but not all the events involving women, nor all political violence against women. The data exclude domestic violence or other forms of non-political violence against women, which intensified. Second, the data do not include all countries, most notably the United States and other Western countries, meaning there was likely more activity than is represented. Third, the fatality numbers are not definitive (and may be disposed to media and political manipulation), nor were all fatalities necessarily women.

In this journey, we have strived to add our voices to the continued fight for the safety, health, education, and empowerment of women and girls globally. Beyond the insightful data, we were inspired by the heroic and shocking stories as a tool for awareness, active engagement, and even self empowerment.

As the pandemic continues to plague the world past our predefined “Pandemic Burst”, we believe that it is possible to keep women and girls worldwide safe from it while promoting and protecting their fundamental rights. What the last few months have shown us is that women should not have to sacrifice themselves and their rights in this pandemic.

Women should be free to protest against gender-based inequality and violence; to work on the frontlines of the pandemic without fear of discrimination or retaliation; to be leaders at all levels of government; and to be themselves. But as the days of the pandemic go by and women continue to be oppressed, harassed, and killed, we should all decide: “Not on our watch.”

We would like to dedicate this project to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an unyielding advocate for Women’s Rights and a hero to both of us.