Five Major Crucial Incidents in the Attack on the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
This time last year, groups dedicated to gender equality were preparing for a return of Donald Trump to office. Scarcely anyone expected. The volume and speed of administrative decrees emanating from the White House were regarded as a premeditated approach to cause confusion and fear. This strategy had its intended impact – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as networks struggled to compensate for the loss left by a sudden aid suspension. But this was only the precursor.
The Trump administration has been the central catalyst, complemented by intense advocacy work by deeply conservative factions using the moment to solidify transnational relationships with like-minded governments.
The anti-rights movement describes a worldwide alliance of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that strive to weaken gains in a variety of areas. These include abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They do this by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We analyze five moments that impacted the protection, honor, and existence of the female population.
USAID Dismantled
In early spring, six weeks after a major US aid agency is halted, causing widespread distress, a top American diplomat announces that over eighty percent of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. US diplomats, past leaders and aid and medical specialists criticize the move, predicting that fatalities will ensue. Activists say that the demise of the agency is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. A multitude of agencies say the impact on girls and women will be severe by reduced funding, especially in war zones. As the year ends, reports confirm how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Two other major donor nations announce their own austerity measures. A leader of an international advocacy group says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance 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 strategic summit held alongside the international conference on women's rights. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in high spirits as they applaud new Washington directives on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the gender equality forum with a somber alert that “the venom of male dominance” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that groups opposing progressive rights are deliberately weakening established norms on key women’s rights issues around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the warmer months, a sequence of gatherings in Africa focused on the conservative family structures and national independence sparks alarm among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a head of state and partner open a large assembly to resist what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A shortly thereafter, another regional summit on family values is held. Both events are graced by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to push back against “radical global social engineering” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a global faith group hosts a family strengthening conference in West Africa, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Campaigners note that the level of external participation has increased markedly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are facing shortages of birth control, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their incineration will prevent countless females 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 exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “callous and reckless”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains in deadlock as host nation officials are blocking usable products to be destroyed.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the policy was restored in the first month of the year. 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 sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. More details on the expansion of the rule are likely forthcoming. A expert in child welfare says broadening the policy will have “unimaginable effects”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become contingent upon adopting the broadened restrictions.
