Five Defining Key Moments in the Attack on the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
A year ago, groups dedicated to gender equality were anticipating a second Trump term. Scarcely anyone expected. The sheer number and rapid pace of administrative decrees emanating from the White House were viewed as a deliberate tactic to overwhelm and create panic. In many ways it worked – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as groups rushed to plug the hole left by a sudden aid suspension. But the situation was about to worsen.
The Washington leadership has been the central catalyst, aided by relentless activism by ultra-conservative groups exploiting the situation to build worldwide connections with sympathetic regimes.
Often termed the anti-gender movement denotes an international coalition of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as billionaire families and individuals that aim to roll back progress across a wide spectrum of issues. This encompasses access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They achieve this through advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We analyze five episodes that affected the protection, honor, and existence of the female population.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In the month of March, shortly after a prominent humanitarian funder is halted, causing turmoil around the world, a senior US official reveals that nearly all of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. US diplomats, former presidents and relief and public health authorities condemn the news, predicting that mortality will increase. Rights defenders say that the demise of the agency is not just a financial shortfall, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. A multitude of agencies say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by diminishing aid, especially in war zones. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Another pair of leading funders announce their own austerity measures. 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.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In March, several conservative religious groups meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a biannual gathering held in parallel with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in buoyant mood as they welcome shifts in US policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the global conference with a stark warning that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a study indicates that anti-rights actors are systematically eroding historic agreements on key women’s rights issues around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa themed around the conventional household and state autonomy raises concerns among rights advocates. In the start of May, a head of state and partner open a major forum to combat what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A shortly thereafter, another Pan-African conference on family values is held. Both events are attended by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to stand up to “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of global institutions. In June, a major religious institution hosts a family strengthening conference in West Africa, an event that health activists say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Activists observe that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are running out of contraceptives, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in July 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 incineration will prevent countless females from access to birth control, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains in deadlock as local authorities refuse to permit the destruction of viable medicines.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which prohibits Washington's support for 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 reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Additional information regarding the policy's widened application are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says extending the reach will have “unimaginable effects”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that new US aid packages being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the expanded global gag.
