“Why does it feel like it’s somehow all slipping away? And how do we get it back?”

That’s one of the opening lines in Liberation, a play now showing on Broadway, in which the lead character looks back at her mother’s efforts to fight for equality in the 1970s.

Demonstrators dressed as characters from The Handmaid’s Tale march to the US Supreme Court during a Trump Must Go Now rally. Credit: AP

Offstage, it’s a question many American women are asking.

“It feels like we’ve gone back in time,” Maria Gwinn, a 25-year-old from Ohio, told me outside the theatre.

The road towards gender equality has been paved with potholes and obstacles. But here in the US, it seems we haven’t just arrived at a stop sign – we’re doing a U-turn.

After decades of progress, the gender pay gap is widening; and women, particularly Black women, have borne the brunt of the Trump administration’s cuts to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Leading female members of the military have been fired by War Secretary Pete Hegseth, the man who has said women should not serve in combat roles and has ties to a Christian nationalist pastor who believes women should not be allowed to vote.

But the most egregious example of how the US has entered a time machine would have to be the ongoing efforts to strip women of their rights to control their own........

© The Sydney Morning Herald