A Quintet of Key Moments in the Erosion of the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
This time last year, feminist advocacy groups were preparing for a Trump presidency sequel. Hardly anyone anticipated. The torrent and swiftness of executive orders issued from the White House were viewed as a calculated strategy to induce a state of shock. This strategy had its intended impact – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as groups rushed to address the shortfall left by a major funding freeze. But this merely marked the opening act.
The Washington leadership has been the primary force, aided by relentless activism by ultra-conservative groups using the moment to build worldwide connections with political allies.
This opposition to progressive rights denotes an international coalition of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that strive to weaken gains in a variety of areas. These include access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They achieve this through influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We review five junctures that impacted the protection, honor, and existence of the female population.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In early spring, six weeks after a major US aid agency is halted, causing turmoil around the world, a senior US official confirms that the lion's share of the institution's work will be scrapped. US diplomats, ex-presidents and relief and public health authorities criticize the move, 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 diminishing aid, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, statistics reveal how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with millions more to come. Two other major donor nations proceed with parallel slashes. A director of a global justice organization says a move to cut foreign aid drastically 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 luxury Manhattan venue for a two-day conference held concurrently with the international conference on women's rights. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. 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 somber alert that “the poison of patriarchy” is resurgent, after a study indicates that anti-rights actors are actively undermining 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 centered on the conventional household and state autonomy raises concerns among equality campaigners. In May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to combat what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A shortly thereafter, another Pan-African conference on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of global institutions. In June, a global faith group hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in an African nation, an event that health activists say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Advocates remark that the scale of their presence has increased markedly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are running out of contraceptives, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in July plans to destroy a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a storage facility in Belgium. A global sexual health network states that their incineration will prevent 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 exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “heartless and dangerous”. NGOs offer to buy 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 refuse to permit usable products to be destroyed.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, 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 rule was reinstated in January. 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 sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the policy's widened application are likely forthcoming. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “catastrophic impacts”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that fresh American assistance deals being arranged with states on the continent will become conditional on accepting the expanded global gag.
