Five Defining Key Moments in the Attack on the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
In the previous year, organisations advocating for women's rights were anticipating a Trump presidency sequel. Few were prepared for. The flood and velocity of White House mandates issued from the White House were regarded as a premeditated approach to paralyze through overload. The tactic proved effective – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as organisations scrambled to plug the hole left by a freeze on international development funds. But this merely marked the opening act.
The Trump administration has been the main instigator, bolstered by vigorous campaigning by religious fundamentalist networks seizing the opportunity to build worldwide connections with like-minded governments.
The movement against gender equality describes a worldwide alliance of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as affluent financiers and clans that work to dismantle advances on numerous fronts. These include access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They do this by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We analyze five instances that impacted the security, respect, and well-being of girls and women.
USAID Dismantled
In March, shortly after a key American development organization is suspended, causing global disruption, a top American diplomat announces that a vast majority of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. US diplomats, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists denounce the action, predicting that mortality will increase. Rights defenders say that the closure of the organization is not just a financial shortfall, it is a savage attack on human rights and birth control and maternal healthcare. A multitude of agencies say the impact on girls and women will be severe by diminishing aid, especially in war zones. As the year ends, data shows how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Another pair of leading funders initiate similar reductions. A leader of an international advocacy group says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In the same month, several conservative religious groups meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a biannual gathering held alongside the international conference on women's rights. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they applaud changes in American foreign policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the women’s summit with a grave caution that “the venom of male dominance” is back, after a analysis demonstrates that groups opposing progressive rights are actively undermining longstanding consensus on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the warmer months, a series of conferences in Africa themed around the traditional family and national sovereignty sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In May, a president and first lady 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 traditional morals is held. Both events are graced by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to push back against “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of global institutions. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in the region, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Advocates remark that the extent of foreign involvement has increased markedly.
Contraceptive Destruction Order
As health facilities across Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a vast stockpile of birth control held in a European depot. A major reproductive health federation states that their incineration will prevent millions of women and girls from access to birth control, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. 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 host nation officials refuse to permit usable products to be destroyed.
‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded
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 anticipated when the ban was reimposed in the first month of the year. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. 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 broader enforcement are anticipated next year. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being arranged with states on the continent will become dependent on agreeing to the expanded global gag.
