Five Significant Developments in the Attack on the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
In the previous year, feminist advocacy groups were steeling themselves against a second Trump term. Scarcely anyone expected. The sheer number and rapid pace of executive orders issued from the White House were seen as a deliberate tactic to paralyze through overload. This strategy had its intended impact – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as groups rushed to compensate for the loss left by a sudden aid suspension. But this was only the precursor.
The US administration has been the key driver, supported by fervent lobbying efforts by religious fundamentalist networks capitalizing on the climate to solidify transnational relationships with sympathetic regimes.
The movement against gender equality describes a worldwide alliance of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as affluent financiers and clans that aim to roll back progress across a wide spectrum of issues. Areas targeted involve access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They accomplish their goals by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We review five junctures that influenced the protection, honor, and existence of women and girls.
USAID Dismantled
In the month of March, six weeks after a prominent humanitarian funder is halted, causing global disruption, a senior US official reveals that nearly all of the institution's work will be scrapped. US diplomats, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists criticize the move, stating that people will die as a result. Rights defenders say that the closure of the organization is more than a funding crisis, it is a savage attack on human rights and family planning and reproductive care. Many organisations say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by diminishing aid, especially in war zones. As the year ends, statistics reveal how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Additional key contributing countries initiate similar reductions. A leader of an international advocacy group says a choice to reduce international development funding is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In March, several conservative religious groups meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a two-day conference held in parallel with the international conference on women's rights. 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 applaud changes in American foreign policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the gender equality forum with a grave caution that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is resurgent, after a report shows that anti-rights actors are systematically eroding historic agreements on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the warmer months, a series of conferences in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy triggers anxiety among human rights defenders. In the start of May, a head of state and partner open a large assembly to resist what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A few days later, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are attended by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “international liberal agenda” of multilateral bodies. In June, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households 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 expanded considerably.
Contraceptive Destruction Order
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of a vast stockpile of birth control held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their elimination will deprive millions of women and girls from contraceptive supplies, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “callous and reckless”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains unresolved as the regional government will not allow perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which halts US aid to groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the ban was reimposed in the first month of the year. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. 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. Additional information regarding the broader enforcement are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.