The year in patriarchy: coconut trees, ‘childless cat ladies’ and crimes against humanity

2024 was a very demure, very mindful, very dystopian sort of year. I started last year’s annual roundup by noting that it had been the hottest year on record and … guess what? 2024 has now surpassed 2023 as the hottest year ever. Many of the same extreme themes from last year have also persisted: anti-abortion activists are still trying to roll back reproductive rights in the US and the horrific situation for women in Iran and Afghanistan has only got worse.

Meanwhile Gaza is still being destroyed, and – despite the fact that an increasing number of experts are terming the bombardment a “genocide” – the US is continuing to enable the destruction and much of the world is still continuing to look away. The civil war in Sudan, which started last April, has also spread catastrophically, with women and girls bearing the brunt of the humanitarian crisis.

It wasn’t a bad year for women everywhere. In pop culture, it was (once again) the year of Taylor Swift. The pop sensation’s epic Eras tour finally came to an end in December after a record-breaking $2bn in ticket sales. Charli xcx also had a major year and brought us a much-needed slime green Brat summer.

Even the combined star power of Swift (who endorsed her) and Charli xcx (who declared that “kamala IS brat”), couldn’t help Kamala Harris become the first female president of the US, however. Nor could a million coconut tree memes. But while the US still seems averse to voting for a woman, Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum became the country’s first female president in a landslide victory. And Haliey Welch (better known as “hawk tuah” girl), became the first woman to parlay a viral joke about oral sex into a lucrative brand empire, including a podcast and merchandising deal, only to get embroiled in a $440mn cryptocurrency scandal.

To invoke one of the most memorable phrases of the year: it’s now time to “hold space” for everything that happened with a list. To round off 2024, here are 10 of the biggest – and most absurd – stories from the year in patriarchy:

1. Donald Trump, a legally defined sexual predator, won the US presidency again

More than 27 women have accused the incoming president of sexual misconduct, and a jury in a civil case last year found Trump liable for sexually abusing the writer E Jean Carroll. None of that seems to matter to a large percentage of the American public who enthusiastically voted Trump in for his “revenge term”. The adjudicated fraudster is already busy filling the White House with other people accused of sexual misconduct. Meanwhile his vice-president, JD Vance, can’t stop talking about “childless cat ladies”. And Trump’s right-hand man, Elon Musk, is obsessed with Americans having as many children as possible and seems intrigued by the idea that women can’t think freely because of “low T”. What a time to be alive.

2. Access to the abortion pill came under attack in the US

Medication abortions now make up more than 60% of all US abortions. This has made the common abortion pill, mifepristone (generally used as part of a two-drug regimen in medication abortions) a major target for anti-abortion activists. In June the US supreme court rejected an attempt to roll back access to the medication, but individual states are still doing their best to make getting hold of the abortion pill difficult. Louisiana, for example, has reclassified mifepristone and misoprostol as “controlled substances”.

3. France enshrined abortion as a constitutional right

The French looked at everything that has happened in the US and, in a historic vote, vowed to give the right to abortion full constitutional protection. Très bon.

4. The Taliban continued its war on Afghan women

Women are being systematically erased from every facet of public life in Afghanistan. This year, among other restrictions, the Taliban made a move to ban women from training as nurses and midwives; banned women from speaking or showing their faces outside their homes; and decided to resume publicly stoning women to death. UN experts have called the Taliban’s system of discrimination a “crime against humanity’ and, in a groundbreaking move, the Taliban will be taken to the international court of justice for gender discrimination.

5. Gisèle Pelicot showed the world that ‘shame must change sides’

After discovering that her (now ex) husband of 50 years had been drugging her and inviting at least 50, and possibly more than 80, strangers to rape her for almost a decade, Gisèle Pelicot waived her right to anonymity and invited the world into her trial. She was determined, she said, “that things change” in this “macho, patriarchal society that trivialises rape”. Dominique Pelicot, 72, was given the maximum 20-year sentence and the French court found all 50 co-accused guilty of sexual offences. Gisèle has become a feminist icon, inspired millions, and sparked a reckoning with rape culture.

6. Paris 2024 was the first Olympics to achieve gender parity

When Paris hosted the Olympics in 1924 less than 5% of the participants were women and they were only allowed to compete in “ladylike” sports. A century later the International Olympic Committee (IOC) declared the 2024 Paris Games the #GenderEqualOlympics. Calling it equal is a bit of a stretch, but there was numerical gender parity on the playing field. And there were also a lot of memorable moments: who can forget Raygun’s kangaroo hop?

7. Iran announced a ‘treatment clinic’ for women who defy strict hijab laws

The opening of a “hijab removal treatment clinic” was announced in November amid a crackdown on women who are considered to be in breach of Iran’s mandatory dress code and will offer “scientific and psychological treatment for hijab removal”. In other words, it’ll be a prison.

8. More women and children killed in Gaza than any other recent conflict

An Oxfam analysis published in September found that more women and children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the past year than the equivalent period of any other conflict over the past two decades. According to one estimate, a child is killed every 10 minutes in Gaza and death feels imminent for 96% of children.

9. Women in Sudan faced systematic sexual violence

The civil war in Sudan, which appears to have been significantly enabled by the UAE, has led to a catastrophic humanitarian crisis and widening famine. UN experts have documented “staggering” amounts of sexual and gender-based violence against girls and women. Men and boys have also been targeted while in detention with sexual violence.

10. Moo Deng waddled her way into our hearts

Adorable, ungovernable and incredibly moist: the baby pygmy hippo became a viral sensation. She got her own dance anthem (“Moodeng boing boing / Boing boing boing boing”); correctly predicted the US election; launched a million memes; featured on Saturday Night Live; and inspired an enormous amount of merchandise. Because it’s 2024, her story also got an obligatory crypto twist: the Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin donated nearly $294,000 to Moo Deng’s zoo, describing himself as the hippo’s “adoptive father”. May the little hippo continue to flourish in 2025.