2015
In Argentina and across Latin America, Ni Una Menos had mobilized mass protests against femicide and state impunity. The femicide of 14-year-old Chiara Páez in 2015 motivates a self-organized call to agitate against all kinds of violence against women under the slogan #NotOneLess.What starts as a social media campaign transforms, over time, into the Ni Una Menos movement. Online activism combines with the offline mobilization of thousands of women who take to the streets to express their outrage against gender-based violence.
While the global #MeToo movement gains prominence in 2017, feminist resistance to gender-based violence has long been active across the Global South. Movements such as Egypt’s We Are All Laila (2006), India’s anti-rape protests (2012), Argentina’s Ni Una Menos (2015), and South Africa’s #RUReferenceList (2016) had exposed the pervasiveness of sexual harassment and state indifference.
In 2017, #MeToo provides a discursive opening for survivors worldwide, but its framing often overlooks decades-long struggles led by feminists in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, who had been organizing in workplaces, campuses, and streets. In Nigeria, #ArewaMeToo challenges both patriarchal violence and religious conservatism.
These movements are deeply intersectional, connecting gender-based violence to structural racism, class inequalities, and postcolonial oppression. While #MeToo spurs global policy debates, Global South feminists critique its initial focus on elite, urban, and often Western voices, emphasizing the need for contextual responses addressing militarism, migration, economic precarity, and legal systems that frequently fail survivors. From Jakarta to Johannesburg, their resistance underscores feminist struggles against sexual violence did not just begin in 2017—nor were they confined to hashtags.
