Five Critical Key Moments in the Assault on the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
This time last year, groups dedicated to gender equality were bracing themselves for a new Trump administration. Few were prepared for. The torrent and swiftness of White House mandates originating in the White House were regarded as a deliberate tactic to overwhelm and create panic. In many ways it worked – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as agencies hastened to plug the hole left by a major funding freeze. But that was just the beginning.
The Washington leadership has been the main instigator, complemented by relentless activism by deeply conservative factions seizing the opportunity to forge international alliances with like-minded governments.
The anti-rights movement describes a worldwide alliance of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as affluent financiers and clans that aim to roll back progress across a wide spectrum of issues. This encompasses abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They do this by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We look at five junctures that influenced the protection, honor, and existence of females globally.
The Dismantling of USAID
In March, six weeks after a prominent humanitarian funder is frozen, causing international chaos, a senior US official states that nearly all of the organization's initiatives will be axed. American foreign service officers, former presidents and humanitarian and health experts denounce the action, cautioning that people will die as a result. Rights defenders say that the demise of the agency is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a savage attack on human rights and birth control and maternal healthcare. A multitude of agencies say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by reduced funding, especially in war zones. As the year ends, statistics reveal how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with many more millions at risk. Another pair of leading funders initiate similar reductions. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In the same month, several Christian-right organisations meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a biannual gathering held concurrently with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in high spirits as they celebrate new Washington directives on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the global conference with a grave caution that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a analysis demonstrates that anti-rights actors are actively undermining longstanding consensus on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa focused on the traditional family and national sovereignty raises concerns among human rights defenders. In May, a president and first lady open a major forum to push back on what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A shortly thereafter, another regional summit on conservative ethics is held. Both events are graced by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker urges African NGOs to push back against “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of multilateral bodies. In June, a prominent church hosts a family strengthening conference in an African nation, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Activists observe that the level of external participation has grown significantly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a storage facility in Belgium. A leading family planning organization states that their destruction will deny millions of women and girls from contraceptive supplies, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “callous and reckless”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains at a standstill as the regional government are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which halts US aid to groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the ban was reimposed in January. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. But in October, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Additional information regarding the expansion of the rule are anticipated next year. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “unimaginable effects”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being arranged with states on the continent will become contingent upon adopting the broadened restrictions.
