Feminism, whether pink pussy hats, Rosie the Riveter fists, or Bikini Kill screams incarnates itself over and over again. Platforms, social media, wheat pasted walls reverberate in a sisterly shrill. Often white, often multi-generational, always in waves. As sure enough time and again, the patriarchy reminds women, your pussy is under my power. 

When the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, it didn’t end abortion, it removed it from being a safe option for women across the country. Make no mistake women and girls will die because of this ruling, setting back decades of feminist progress.

I write under no delusion of how activism works, it’s a long road. Incremental shifts forward and back in hopes of progress to a better world. Second wave feminism sprang back into action across the US. This is America activated, old rallying cries returned  such as “Get your laws off my body” and “My body my choice” all going from vintage to de rigueur in a flash. 

As a working woman, there are two channels of governance I am held to;  my country and my company. They govern my body, they govern my choice. On the 24^th June 2022, as women lost their legal right to a safe abortion and more, companies proclaimed their power over pussies too. 

JP Morgan Chase, Starbucks, Nike, Big Tech (Microsoft, Google, Meta, Apple), Entertainment (Disney, Netflix, Comcast-NBC Universal, WB Discovery), and companies like Kroger, Goldman Sachs, and Dick’s created online posts describing their commitments. Kroger specifically promised $4000 for out of state reproductive healthcare including abortions. These decisions may ruffle some board feathers and stocks may show a brief conservative backlash. But it’s those they vow to help who are the only ones being hoodwinked with hollow promises. After all, what workplace is safe enough for a woman to share she needs an abortion?

81% of American women have been sexually harassed at the workplace. 58% of women sexually harassed at American companies do not report it, that same percentage said they don’t think they will be believed and women sexually harassed at work are 6.5 times as likely to change jobs, often to jobs that are with lower pay. 

Though sexual harassment is not the same as needing a medical procedure such as an abortion, we can learn a lot from these statistics around workplace safety for women. We can see in the statistics how bringing up sexual matters is not safe for women at the office. The UK government’s study on sexual harassment in the UK released in 2020 showed that people did not formally report experiences of sexual harassment in the workplace because it would affect career progression (23%) and would make their work situation uncomfortable. If women cannot trust a company to take care of them when sexually wronged, how can they feel safe in their sexual rights?

Until workplaces can solve the rampant systemic misogyny, such policy announcements on women’s sexual healthcare remain hollow. Speaking truth to power is not an insta-post or PR statement devoid of declaration. Feminists young and old recognize it’s a long-game, but it’s time the c-suite showed up to their boards with a plan rather than a post.