Five Major Significant Developments in the Assault on the Freedoms of Women and Girls in 2025.
A year ago, feminist advocacy groups were steeling themselves against a return of Donald Trump to office. Hardly anyone anticipated. The volume and speed of executive orders issued from the White House were seen as a calculated strategy to paralyze through overload. This strategy had its intended impact – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as agencies hastened to address the shortfall left by a sudden aid suspension. But this merely marked the opening act.
The Washington leadership has been the primary force, bolstered by relentless activism by ultra-conservative groups exploiting the situation to build worldwide connections with like-minded governments.
The movement against gender equality signifies a transnational grouping of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as wealthy philanthropists and dynasties that seek to undermine gains in a variety of areas. This encompasses pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They achieve this through advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We look at five junctures that affected the protection, honor, and existence of females globally.
The Dismantling of USAID
In the month of March, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is suspended, causing international chaos, a leading figure in the administration reveals that a vast majority of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and humanitarian and health experts denounce the action, cautioning that people will die as a result. Rights defenders say that the closure of the organization is not just a financial shortfall, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and birth control and maternal healthcare. A multitude of agencies say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by waning support, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with millions more to come. Additional key contributing countries proceed with parallel slashes. A leader of an international advocacy group says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In the same month, several Christian-right organisations meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a two-day conference held in parallel with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they welcome changes in American foreign policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a somber alert that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a report shows that anti-rights actors are actively undermining historic agreements on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa focused on the traditional family and national sovereignty sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In early May, a head of state and partner open a significant conference to resist what they label external influences undermining local norms. A few days later, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are attended by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker urges African NGOs to push back against “international liberal agenda” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in West Africa, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the level of external participation has grown significantly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are running out of contraceptives, 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 leading family planning organization states that their elimination will deprive a huge female population from family planning options, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “callous and reckless”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains in deadlock as the regional government are blocking the destruction of viable medicines.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which cuts American funding for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the policy was restored 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. Further specifics about the broader enforcement are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says widening the scope will have “unimaginable effects”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that fresh American assistance deals being arranged with states on the continent will become contingent upon adopting the broadened restrictions.
