Five Critical Crucial Incidents in the Erosion of the Rights of Females in 2025.
This time last year, organisations advocating for women's rights were steeling themselves against a return of Donald Trump to office. Few were prepared for. The flood and velocity of administrative decrees coming out of the White House were regarded as a premeditated approach to cause confusion and fear. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as organisations scrambled to address the shortfall left by a sudden aid suspension. But the situation was about to worsen.
The Washington leadership has been the main instigator, supported by relentless activism by far-right organisations seizing the opportunity to forge international alliances with sympathetic regimes.
The movement against gender equality refers to a global network of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as billionaire families and individuals that seek to undermine advances on numerous fronts. 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 foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We examine five episodes that shaped the safety, dignity and lives of girls and women.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In early spring, a month and a half following a prominent humanitarian funder is its funds are blocked, causing global disruption, a senior US official states that the lion's share of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and humanitarian and health experts criticize the move, stating that mortality will increase. Activists say that the demise of the agency is more than a funding crisis, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and family planning and reproductive care. A multitude of agencies say the impact on girls and women will be severe by reduced funding, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with millions more to come. Another pair of leading funders follow with their own cuts. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a move to appease a political ally.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In the same month, several conservative religious groups meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a biannual gathering held in parallel with the international conference on women's rights. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in buoyant mood as they applaud 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 poison of patriarchy” is returning, after a study indicates that groups opposing progressive rights are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa centered on the traditional family and national sovereignty triggers anxiety among human rights defenders. In May, a head of state and partner open a large assembly to resist what they label external influences undermining local norms. A soon after, another Pan-African conference on conservative ethics is held. Both events are attended by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “radical global social engineering” of multilateral bodies. In June, a prominent church hosts a family strengthening conference in an African nation, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Advocates remark that the level of external participation has increased markedly.
Contraceptive Destruction Order
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a European depot. A leading family planning organization states that their incineration will prevent millions of women and girls from family planning options, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “callous and reckless”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains at a standstill as local authorities will not allow perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reviving the global gag rule, which cuts American funding for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was anticipated 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 broaden the scope of the policy to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. More details on the policy's widened application are anticipated next year. A director of a major health partnership says broadening the policy will have “unimaginable effects”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that new US aid packages being arranged with states on the continent will become contingent upon adopting the broadened restrictions.
