Five Defining Crucial Incidents in the Assault on the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
This time last year, women’s rights organisations were preparing for a second Trump term. Hardly anyone anticipated. The volume and speed of administrative decrees emanating from the White House were regarded as a intentional maneuver to overwhelm and create panic. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as networks struggled to fill the gap left by a freeze on international development funds. But the situation was about to worsen.
The American government has been the main instigator, aided by vigorous campaigning by religious fundamentalist networks capitalizing on the climate to solidify transnational relationships with political allies.
The movement against gender equality signifies a transnational grouping of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as billionaire families and individuals that aim to roll back progress across a wide spectrum of issues. This encompasses reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They achieve this through pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to push for parity, disseminating propaganda, and supporting ideologically-matched groups.
We look at five instances that affected the security, respect, and well-being of women and girls.
USAID Dismantled
In March, six weeks after a prominent humanitarian funder is its funds are blocked, causing international chaos, a senior US official announces that the lion's share of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. Career diplomats, former presidents and relief and public health authorities decry the decision, predicting that mortality will increase. Human rights advocates say that the closure of the organization is not just a financial shortfall, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Many organisations say females will bear the brunt by waning support, especially in war zones. 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 many more millions at risk. Two other major donor nations proceed with parallel slashes. A leader of an international advocacy group says a choice to reduce international development funding is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In the same month, several conservative religious groups meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a two-day conference held in parallel with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in high spirits as they applaud shifts in US policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the women’s summit with a somber alert that “the venom of male dominance” is returning, after a study indicates that anti-rights actors are systematically eroding historic agreements on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa focused on the conservative family structures and national independence raises concerns among rights advocates. In the start of May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to combat what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A few days later, another regional summit on conservative ethics is held. Both events are attended by leading American and European conservative activists, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker calls on African NGOs to resist “international liberal agenda” of multilateral bodies. In June, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in the region, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Advocates remark that the extent of foreign involvement has increased markedly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in July plans to incinerate a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a warehouse in Europe. A leading family planning organization 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 exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “callous and reckless”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains unresolved as host nation officials refuse to permit perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reviving the global gag rule, which halts US aid to groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the ban was reimposed in the first month of the year. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. 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 include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Further specifics about the broader enforcement are anticipated next year. A director of a major health partnership says broadening the policy will have “devastating consequences”. Pro-choice activists fear that fresh American assistance deals being discussed with African nations will become dependent on agreeing to the broadened restrictions.
