Five Pivotal Events in the Challenge to the Rights of Females in the Year 2025.
A year ago, feminist advocacy groups were bracing themselves for a new Trump administration. Hardly anyone anticipated. The sheer number and rapid pace of executive orders coming out of the White House were interpreted as a premeditated approach to overwhelm and create panic. The tactic proved effective – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as groups rushed to compensate for the loss left by a sudden aid suspension. But this merely marked the opening act.
The Washington leadership has been the central catalyst, supported by vigorous campaigning by deeply conservative factions exploiting the situation to forge international alliances with like-minded governments.
The movement against gender equality refers to a global network of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as billionaire families and individuals that strive to weaken advances on numerous fronts. Areas targeted involve access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They accomplish their goals by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to push for parity, disseminating propaganda, and supporting ideologically-matched groups.
We examine five instances that affected the safety, dignity and lives of women and girls.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In early spring, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is its funds are blocked, causing widespread distress, a top American diplomat announces that a vast majority of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. American foreign service officers, ex-presidents and relief and public health authorities decry the decision, predicting that lives will be lost. Human rights advocates say that the demise of the agency is more than a funding crisis, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Many organisations say the impact on girls and women will be severe by diminishing aid, especially in war zones. As the year ends, evidence indicates how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with many more millions at risk. Two other major donor nations proceed with parallel slashes. A director of a global justice organization says a choice to reduce international development funding is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a biannual gathering held in parallel with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in high spirits as they applaud changes in American foreign policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the women’s summit with a stark warning that “the poison of patriarchy” is back, after a study indicates that anti-rights actors are actively undermining established norms on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the warmer months, a cluster of meetings in Africa themed around the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among equality campaigners. In early May, a head of state and partner open a major forum to push back on what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A shortly thereafter, another regional summit on conservative ethics is held. Both events are participated in by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “international liberal agenda” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a global faith group hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in West Africa, an event that health activists say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Activists observe that the extent of foreign involvement has increased markedly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As health facilities across Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in July plans to dispose of a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a storage facility in Belgium. A leading family planning organization states that their elimination will deprive countless females from family planning options, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “heartless and dangerous”. NGOs offer to buy 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 refuse to permit the destruction of viable medicines.
‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which halts US aid to groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the rule was reinstated in the first month of the year. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. More details on the expansion of the rule are expected in early 2026. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that fresh American assistance deals being arranged with states on the continent will become conditional on accepting the expanded global gag.