Trump’s US presidency sparks anxiety for women over rise in online misogyny

“I fear that the rights my mother’s generation fought for and that I have benefited from are already being stripped from my girls.”

Women’s health care professionals say it is likely we will see a rise in anxiety and depression among Australian women fuelled by online misogyny and the events in the US, such as the rolling back of women’s rights, the mandating of strict gender definitions, the abandonment of the Paris Climate Agreement and the elimination of DEI programs.

“The world is now a much smaller place, and being at the mercy of autocratic rules and laws, albeit in a different country, is something women are discussing as having a detrimental effect on their own mental health here,” says Professor Jayashri Kulkarni, director of the HER Centre Australia at Monash University. “We are seeing a lot of distress and there is a fear of, ‘what if that happens here?’”

‘What does this mean for me?’

Australian psychologists and anxiety experts agree that exposure to dehumanising language and news about restricting abortion rights and mandating gender definitions could trigger already-vulnerable members of the community.

“In Australia, the focus is more on domestic violence, which impacts 2.3 million women,” says Dr Zena Burgess, chief executive of the Australian Psychological Society. “This is what underlies their immediate and more personal feelings. When you see news, such as the turning back of reproductive rights, it makes you question, ‘what does this mean for me right now?’”

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“For that reason we have put forward to the government some initiatives around family violence and protecting women and children.” Burgess said her organisation’s submitted report, Thinking Futures: Psychology’s role in transforming women and girls’ psychological health, was “a priority for Australia, and a way of distancing ourselves”.

Travel fears

Sydney mother Deborah Allan is nervous at the prospect of travelling to North America with her family given her husband is a dual Canadian-Australian citizen, as is their five-year-old daughter.

“As a mother of a young daughter, I worry even more about the long-term impact of today’s decisions on future generations, like cuts to healthcare funding, reduced access to contraception and restrictions on abortion rights.”

From a health perspective, the consequences of the Trump administration’s legislation, coupled with weakened fact-checking laws on social media platforms, provide ideal conditions for misinformation in Australia.

“We consume a whole lot of content that comes out of America about the use of medications or engagement with the health system, and we don’t have the mechanisms in Australia to regulate or screen that,” says Bonney Corbin, the chair of the Australian Women’s Health Alliance.

Kulkarni says the mistrust in America of government and the health care system has sabotaged an Australian-led research project she was involved in, which was examining premenstrual depression and required respondents to track their periods.

“A lot of women in Republican states have stopped using the apps to track their periods,” Kulkarni says. “Why? Because in states that don’t have the right to abortion, women fear the data will be used against them by the government.”

Talk to teens

Dr Jodi Richardson, an expert on anxiety and host of the podcast Well, hello anxiety, says young girls and teens should be part of the conversation.

“Creating opportunities for open and safe conversation is really important,” Richardson says. “An opportunity came up for a conversation with my 14-year-old daughter in the car when [the song] TV by Billie Eilish came on with the lyric, ‘while they’re overturning Roe v Wade’. I asked her if she knew what that meant, and it opened a discussion.”

Anxiety therapist Georgie Collinson says there are ways to look after yourself if you are feeling overwhelmed.

• Boundaries: balance staying informed with getting offline. Curate where you source news.
• Action: counteract powerlessness with small acts, like supporting women’s rights organisations.
• Feel: acknowledge any real anger and grief you are feeling.
• Breath work: use nervous system regulation tools such as breath work whenever you feel overwhelmed.

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