Five Defining Pivotal Events in the Rollback of the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
This time last year, women’s rights organisations were preparing for a return of Donald Trump to office. Scarcely anyone expected. The torrent and swiftness of administrative decrees originating in the White House were interpreted as a calculated strategy to induce a state of shock. In many ways it worked – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as organisations scrambled to compensate for the loss left by a major funding freeze. But this merely marked the opening act.
The Washington leadership has been the central catalyst, supported by fervent lobbying efforts by deeply conservative factions using the moment to forge international alliances with ideological partners.
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 forward movement on multiple topics. 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 foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We review five moments that affected the security, respect, and well-being of females globally.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In March, six weeks after a major US aid agency is frozen, causing global disruption, a top American diplomat announces that nearly all of the body's projects will be terminated. Career diplomats, former presidents and humanitarian and health experts decry the decision, predicting that mortality will increase. Rights defenders say that the dismantling of this institution is more than a funding crisis, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Many organisations say females will bear the brunt by diminishing aid, especially in conflict areas. 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 a far greater catastrophe looming. Two other major donor nations initiate similar reductions. 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 the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a biannual gathering held alongside the international conference on women's rights. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they celebrate changes in American foreign policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the gender equality forum with a grave caution that “the poison of patriarchy” is returning, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are actively undermining longstanding consensus on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa focused on the conservative family structures and national independence raises concerns among human rights defenders. In early May, a head of state and partner open a significant conference to resist what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A soon after, another regional summit on family values is held. Both events are attended by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to resist “international liberal agenda” of global institutions. In June, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in an African nation, an event that health activists say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Advocates remark that the scale of their presence has grown significantly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are facing shortages of birth control, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of a vast stockpile of birth control held in a storage facility in Belgium. A global sexual health network states that their destruction will deny countless females from access to birth control, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains at a standstill as the regional government refuse to permit the destruction of viable medicines.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the policy was restored in the first month of the year. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in October, the US announces it intends to extend the restrictions 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 likely forthcoming. A leader in global maternal health says broadening the policy will have “catastrophic impacts”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become conditional on accepting the expanded global gag.