Social media is broiling over the question of whether women would prefer to be stuck in a forest with a man or a bear, and the results of one recent poll expands on the surprising consensus. A survey from Change Research shows roughly a quarter of women of every race live in fear of being raped or sexually assaulted daily, weekly, monthly, or a few times a year.
The April poll of 2,745 women and men suggests why some women, lost in the forest, may prefer the company of the 400-pound critter with three-inch canines. The modern political landscape does little to calm their fears, according to respondents, with 60 percent of women feeling they are losing their rights, and 56 percent fear losing their bodily autonomy.
That same poll outlined a sharp disconnect between women in fear of their diminishing power and the political party responsible.
Texas resident Collin Davis recently declared his ex-girlfriend’s womb to be his property by hiring a lawyer to investigate her recent abortion. He is pursuing “wrongful-death claims against anyone involved in the killing of his unborn child,” according to records. Davis’ dispute is that since abortion is illegal in Texas, he can legally pursue his ex-girlfriend all the way to Colorado if she dared travel there for an abortion. Helping him in his argument is Texas’ wrongful-death statute and a new Texas law passed by Republicans that allows private citizens to file suit against anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion.
However, many U.S. women are failing to see one party as the cause of their shrinking rights. Many women polled insist the economy will be better under Trump, therefore all women will be better off, explained Change Research Senior Pollster Betsy App. Many also believe Trump “doesn’t play favorites” and will advocate for women just as much as he advocates for men. Pollsters also snooped anti-trans sentiment steering women to Trump’s corner, with many cis-gender women believing Trump will “protect them” from trans women, as if trans people were the one’s erasing their bodily autonomy and suing them over a personal reproductive decision.
"We have the receipts.” —Change Research Senior Pollster Betsy App.
“I … believe [Trump] is more likely to protect women’s rights and spaces from men who claim to be women,” claimed one respondent, a white woman between the age of 50 and 64.
“[There was] a lot of garden variety hate in some of these open-ended responses, but we know the facts,” said App. “We know that from Day 1, the Trump administration used every tool in their tool-belt to take women backwards on economic security, health and safety, and women’s rights overall. We have the receipts.”
The Trump administration immediately halted companies’ mandatory reports of pay data collection by sex, race, ethnicity, and job category to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), making equal pay between genders more difficult to monitor. The administration also lowered the overtime threshold to $35k a year, making overtime impossible for many women in mid-tier or low-tier jobs. The ex-president and his cohorts also worked to eliminate key nondiscrimination protections in health care, and it weakened Title IX, putting female students at greater risk of sexual harassment and assault, and made prosecuting sexual assault offenses more difficult.
President Biden stepped in and reversed the regressive policies listed above, yet women polled preferred Biden by only 6 points. Despite reversing some of Trump’s most notorious anti-women decisions, roughly the same number of women (26 and 25) said they would be “much better off” if either Trump or Biden won. A majority of respondents did appear to expect tragedy were Trump reelected, with 48 polled women predicting “much worse” under Trump and 33 expecting “much worse” under Biden. BBaffling however, is the preference of Biden as president by near equal percentages to the man who unraveled women’s rights in modern America.
Bringing down the numbers appear to be women who are politically right of center. While most women polled were “definitely not” okay with vanishing women’s rights and would prefer to see yawning gaps between men’s rights and women’s’rights closed, a few appeared fine with “being lesser” than men. Additionally, the nearly equal favorability between two very different presidents appears to come down to a legion of competing issues drowning everything in noise.
“Many people are not single-issue voters, and women are not just voting based on the issue of feeling ‘lesser’ than men,” App said. “That one issue is not particularly salient to women on the right because in part nobody’s been making a big deal of it or making this argument.”
The magnitude of losing command over your own body could also be getting drowned in media flotsam as news organizations shut down and online apps like Facebook, Google and Apple News+ slurp up all available ad revenue. Disinformation news sites like Fox News, Breitbart and Infowars.com, who fill the void, do not explore the economic benefit of a president who pushes for equal pay for women and affordable healthcare for them and their families.
Women readers are losing in the resulting news vacuum, and ideas once popular for their progressivism and advocacy are being rebranded by elements that oppose them. The same Change Research poll determined “feminism,” to be a dirty word among nearly half of female respondents. Many Black and Hispanic women have historical reasons for their mixed feelings toward traditional feminism: plenty of popular women’s movement organizations put the rights of Black and brown women on the backburner in favor of white women’s rights, and many well-known feminist march organizers literally tried to put Black women at the back of the march line. Anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells famously refused to march at the back of a massive 1913 suffragist parade in Washington DC.
However, only half of white women polled see feminism as any sort of benefit, despite reaping the majority of its rewards decades before other races.
“Feminism has a victimization mindset for an anti-male screed. How about standing up for real women instead of giving up ground to transgenderism, which hurts females,” one respondent told Change Research pollsters. Another claimed, “modern feminism is more about hating men and hating being a woman and wanting to prove that women are better than everyone else.”
Pollsters say helping women breach the info gap and see the political possibilities means showing them eroding rights are not “some” women’s problems, but “all” women’s problem. Be honest about the urgency of the situation without alienating or insulting women who, for example, want to be housewives or raise children instead of working for pay. Do talk to women about abortion, directors say, but don’t only talk about abortion in GOTV efforts and communication.
It’s also important to reach beyond abortion, which does not resonate with all women, particularly women who are beyond child-bearing age, or women who oppose it for religious reasons. Rebrand “feminism” as a “women’s freedom and fairness agenda” that encompasses a legion of other popular issues including abortion access, but also employment fairness, physical and online safety and healthcare quality and medical access.
“Discussion needs to come from a genuine place,” said Change Research policy analyst Sumati Thomas. “Friends and family are the most trusted source for many people.”