How to transform autocracy to democracy: Women's rights are primary

From Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale to the Rivera Sun Ari Ara series and in many more fictional examples, we come across the idea that women who have rights tend to enter into social struggle more and likely more effectively. 

In reality, researcher Susanne Schauftenaar (2017) finds that fiction to be fact, in general, citing previous research in her study of women's rights as a factor in the onset of civil society struggle. The previous examinations focused largely on outbreak of violent insurgency; she included nonviolent struggle, using data from the groundbreaking Chenoweth and Stephan study that produced the Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes (NAVCO) data set. 

Indeed, she found, great rights for women tended to be associated with more likelihood of the launch of a nonviolent campaign to achieve a maximal goal--overthrowing an autocrat, driving a foreign armed forces out, or seceding and founding a new sovereign nation.

Overthrowing an aspiring autocrat is going to be more often associated with a country with greater rights for women. Women's rights are drivers toward freedom for all.

References

Schaftenaar, S. (2017). How (wo)men rebel. Journal of Peace Research, 54(6), 762–776. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343317722699