A Quintet of Key Moments in the Rollback of the Freedoms of Women and Girls in 2025.
This time last year, groups dedicated to gender equality were anticipating a second Trump term. Hardly anyone anticipated. The flood and velocity of White House mandates coming out of the White House were seen as a deliberate tactic to paralyze through overload. This strategy had its intended impact – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as agencies hastened to address the shortfall left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But this merely marked the opening act.
The Washington leadership has been the central catalyst, bolstered by intense advocacy work by ultra-conservative groups capitalizing on the climate to forge international alliances with political allies.
This opposition to progressive rights denotes an international coalition of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as affluent financiers and clans that work to dismantle gains in a variety of areas. Areas targeted involve abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They achieve this through advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to push for parity, disseminating propaganda, and supporting ideologically-matched groups.
We look at five moments that impacted the protection, honor, and existence of females globally.
USAID Dismantled
In early spring, shortly after a major US aid agency is frozen, causing international chaos, a senior US official reveals that the lion's share of the organization's initiatives will be axed. American foreign service officers, past leaders and aid and medical specialists decry the decision, warning that lives will be lost. Activists say that the demise of the agency is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a savage attack on human rights and family planning and reproductive care. A multitude of agencies say females will bear the brunt by diminishing aid, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, reports confirm how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with many more millions at risk. 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.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks 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 optimistic frame of mind as they celebrate shifts in US policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the gender equality forum with a somber alert that “the poison of patriarchy” is resurgent, after a report shows that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy triggers anxiety among rights advocates. In May, a president and first lady open a major forum to resist what they label external influences undermining local norms. A shortly thereafter, another continental gathering on traditional morals is held. Both events are participated in by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to resist “radical global social engineering” of international organizations. In June, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in an African nation, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the extent of foreign involvement has expanded considerably.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As health facilities across Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in July plans to dispose of a vast stockpile of birth control held in a warehouse in Europe. A major reproductive health federation states that their elimination will deprive millions of women and girls from family planning options, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains unresolved as host nation officials will not allow usable products to be destroyed.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which halts US aid to groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the rule was reinstated in January. 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 sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the expansion of the rule are likely forthcoming. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being arranged with states on the continent will become dependent on agreeing to the broadened restrictions.
