Five Defining Significant Developments in the Attack on the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
Twelve months prior, organisations advocating for women's rights were bracing themselves for a second Trump term. Hardly anyone anticipated. The volume and speed of executive orders originating in the White House were seen as a calculated strategy to paralyze through overload. This strategy had its intended impact – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as groups rushed to address the shortfall left by a major funding freeze. But the situation was about to worsen.
The American government has been the central catalyst, supported by relentless activism by far-right organisations seizing the opportunity to solidify transnational relationships with political allies.
Often termed the anti-gender movement signifies a transnational grouping of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as affluent financiers and clans that aim to roll back progress across a wide spectrum of issues. These include pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They do this by influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We review five instances that affected the protection, honor, and existence of the female population.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In the month of March, six weeks after a key American development organization is suspended, causing widespread distress, a top American diplomat reveals that a vast majority of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, former presidents and relief and public health authorities decry the decision, stating that lives will be lost. Rights defenders say that the dismantling of this institution is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. Numerous groups say females will bear the brunt by reduced funding, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, statistics reveal how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Two other major donor nations follow with their own cuts. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a choice to reduce international development funding is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In March, several Christian-right organisations meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a strategic summit held concurrently with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they applaud shifts in US policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the global conference with a stark warning that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are systematically eroding longstanding consensus on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the warmer months, a sequence of gatherings in Africa themed around the traditional family and national sovereignty sparks alarm among rights advocates. In May, a president and first lady open a major forum to resist what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A shortly thereafter, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are participated in by leading American and European conservative activists, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to push back against “international liberal agenda” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in an African nation, an event that health activists say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Campaigners note that the scale of their presence has grown significantly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in July plans to incinerate millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their destruction will deny a huge female population from access to birth control, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains at a standstill as local authorities refuse to permit the destruction of viable medicines.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which cuts American funding 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 the first month of the year. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. More details on the policy's widened application are likely forthcoming. A leader in global maternal health says extending the reach will have “unimaginable effects”. Pro-choice activists fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being discussed with African nations will become dependent on agreeing to the broadened restrictions.
