A Quintet of Crucial Incidents in the Assault on the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
Twelve months prior, groups dedicated to gender equality were anticipating a second Trump term. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The torrent and swiftness of presidential directives coming out of the White House were regarded as a intentional maneuver to cause confusion and fear. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as networks struggled to plug the hole left by a major funding freeze. But that was just the beginning.
The Washington leadership has been the central catalyst, bolstered by fervent lobbying efforts by deeply conservative factions using the moment to strengthen global ties with political allies.
The movement against gender equality denotes an international coalition of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that seek to undermine advances on numerous fronts. These include pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They pursue this agenda via advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We look at five junctures that affected the safety, dignity and lives of females globally.
USAID Dismantled
In early spring, shortly after a prominent humanitarian funder is its funds are blocked, causing turmoil around the world, a leading figure in the administration reveals that a vast majority of the organization's initiatives will be axed. American foreign service officers, former presidents and humanitarian and health experts decry the decision, stating that fatalities will ensue. Activists say that the dismantling of this institution is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and birth control and maternal healthcare. A multitude of agencies say the impact on girls and women will be severe by reduced funding, especially in war zones. As the year ends, statistics reveal how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Two other major donor nations announce their own austerity measures. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a move to appease a political ally.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In the same month, several conservative religious groups meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a two-day conference held alongside the international conference on women's rights. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in buoyant mood as they welcome shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the gender equality forum with a grave caution that “the poison of patriarchy” is back, after a analysis demonstrates that groups opposing progressive rights are systematically eroding longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa themed around the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a head of state and partner open a large assembly to combat what they label external influences undermining local norms. A shortly thereafter, another Pan-African conference on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to resist “international liberal agenda” of global institutions. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in an African nation, an event that health activists say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Campaigners note that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in July plans to incinerate millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their elimination will deprive millions of women and girls from access to birth control, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “callous and reckless”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains unresolved as local authorities refuse to permit perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reviving the global gag rule, which halts US aid to groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the policy was restored in January. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in October, the US announces it intends to broaden the scope of the policy to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. More details on the expansion of the rule are anticipated next year. A director of a major health partnership says extending the reach will have “unimaginable effects”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being negotiated with countries in Africa will become dependent on agreeing to the expanded global gag.
