When people look back at the political upheaval on both sides of the Atlantic in 2016, two words will come to sum up the aftermath of “old politics” more than anything else: executive control. In the era of unexpected consequences, the most unexpected of all is that voters who acted to take back control from politicians have in fact given them unparalleled power to act without oversight.

It has become normal to see the daily work of Donald Trump summed up in a photograph of him – surrounded by his Praetorian guard of gloating white men – signing away freedoms, from travel visas and abortion rights to workplace protections. In the UK the mass rewriting of our country’s laws post-Brexit has been claimed by Theresa May as a job too time-consuming to allow for input from opposition parties. The Conservative party plans to move our rights around using secondary legislation that does not require a parliamentary vote.

When those with absolute power wield it absolutely, women’s rights are always in the firing line

When those with absolute power wield it absolutely, women’s rights are always in the firing line. Women are simultaneously exposed and invisible to institutions and decision-makers that define the health of our economies and societies according to whether men flourish – an approach that simultaneously ensures many never will, so long as economic and social opportunities for all go unclaimed. The Women’s Equality (WE) party was formed precisely to spotlight and challenge such political neglect. Current circumstances make this party more necessary than ever.

Because WE saw this coming. Working with the Greens and amassing the widest cross-party support, WE tabled an amendment to the article 50 bill precisely because we saw the government shaping up to remove legislative oversight from provisions in a way that would leave women particularly vulnerable. We wanted to ensure that parliament would have oversight of ministers rewriting laws to interpret EU employment and equality directives such as the working time regulations, which protects rights to annual leave, rest breaks and overtime pay. This was consistently opposed, delayed and challenged by the UK under its EU membership.

‘The Women’s Equality party saw the government shaping up to remove legislative oversight in a way that would leave women vulnerable’ Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Our amendment was thrown out in both houses, meaning that the rights contained in this and other regulations such as health and safety at work, maternity and parental leave and the part-time workers regulations are all open to “reinterpretation” as they are written into UK law. Details like offering pregnant workers alternative work at the same rate of pay, protecting workers from redundancy during maternity leave and preventing less favourable treatment to part-time workers are all subject to the preferred wording of government ministers working behind closed doors.

Amendment or policy shift? Who’s watching? Women will be disproportionately affected by the rolling back of employment rights: they are more likely to take time off to care for young children and other family members, be single parents and be in part-time work. The impact on pregnant and breastfeeding workers would be the greatest.

Granted, we’re talking about laws that sometimes don’t work well. There is much scope to amend and improve the experiences of thousands of women in the UK who lose their jobs after pregnancy or are paid less per hour than their full-time colleagues to do exactly the same job but fewer days a week. But successive governments have demonstrated time and again that they do not care about women.

Tax and benefit changes introduced since 2010 have been paid for largely by women, who by 2020 will have shouldered 86% of welfare cuts, with black and Asian women suffering the most. While many parents choose to spend time at home with young children, the Labour Force Survey shows that at least 600,000 stay-at-home parents would prefer to have a paid job if they could afford to do so, particularly women. Still more have been pushed over the poverty line by failing to meet the tightened criteria of personal independence payments for disabled people or by having their retirement age changed with minimal consultation. And when Philip Hammond is suggesting a future economic model based on Singapore-style tax havens while – you can be sure – hard Brexiteers tour CEO suites making lists of workers’ rights that could be for the chop, it seems likely the provisions we have left may well be further diminished.

Equally, when the government has pushed through repellent rules forcing women to disclose rape in order to receive welfare should non-consensual sex push them over the two-children limit for receiving tax credits, and our main Brexit negotiator is a man who swapped jokes with colleagues about a black female MP being too ugly to kiss, you have to wonder whether protecting women from harassment and violence will be a priority in Brexit Britain. May talks a lot about violence against women, all the while slashing budgets for survivors’ services – but from David Davis there has been total silence on the future of the EU’s victims’ directive, which guarantees specialist support and protection from repeat victimisation for women, the equal treatment directive, which sets standards on preventing sexual harassment, and the anti-trafficking directive, which creates a framework for prevention, victim support and police cooperation.

There has been silence too on the replacement of key EU funding for UK organisations that rely on the European Social Fund to mitigate the cuts to welfare reform that have had such a disproportionate impact on women. Much of this EU money is being redirected by women’s services to counter a range of lifelines now scrapped that supported survivors of violence on the long, slow path back into employment.

A ray of hope is that ministers might be bold rather than brutal when it comes to rewriting our interpretation of human rights law. The European court of justice’s recent ruling that organisations can ban employees from wearing the hijab was shameful, and yet another barrier to work for Muslim women struggling to access employment given the triple discrimination imposed upon them due to their gender, ethnicity and religion. Given the tidal wave of Islamophobia engulfing this country, a clear sign from ministers seeking to escape the jurisdiction of the ECJ that religion remains a protected characteristic – along with gender, age, disability, race and sexual orientation – would help tackle the explosion of hate against “difference” that we’ve seen since 23 June 2016.

Brexit was supposed to be about taking back control and “protecting our own”. With the government taking control back to Whitehall rather than letting it reside in the Commons, the Women’s Equality party will work harder than ever to assert the rights and choices of women who are every bit as much the UK’s “own” as men.