A Quintet of Pivotal Events in the Rollback of the Rights of Females in the Year 2025.
This time last year, feminist advocacy groups were preparing for a return of Donald Trump to office. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The volume and speed of White House mandates coming out of the White House were interpreted as a intentional maneuver to overwhelm and create panic. In many ways it worked – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as networks struggled to address the shortfall left by a freeze on international development funds. But this was only the precursor.
The American government has been the main instigator, supported by intense advocacy work by far-right organisations using the moment to forge international alliances with political allies.
The movement against gender equality signifies a transnational grouping of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as billionaire families and individuals that seek to undermine advances on numerous fronts. This encompasses pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They pursue this agenda via pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We analyze five moments that affected the security, respect, and well-being of females globally.
USAID Dismantled
In the month of March, six weeks after a prominent humanitarian funder is frozen, causing global disruption, a leading figure in the administration reveals that a vast majority of the institution's work will be scrapped. Career diplomats, past leaders and relief and public health authorities criticize the move, predicting that fatalities will ensue. Rights defenders say that the demise of the agency is not just a financial shortfall, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and birth control and maternal healthcare. Numerous groups say the impact on girls and women will be severe by diminishing aid, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, data shows how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with many more millions at risk. Another pair of leading funders proceed with parallel slashes. A leader of an international advocacy group says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In March, several Christian-right organisations meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a biannual gathering held concurrently with the international conference on women's rights. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they celebrate changes in American foreign policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the women’s summit with a grave caution that “the venom of male dominance” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that anti-rights actors are systematically eroding longstanding consensus on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the warmer months, a series of conferences in Africa themed around the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among equality campaigners. In early May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to combat what they label external influences undermining local norms. A shortly thereafter, another regional summit on conservative ethics is held. Both events are graced by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including heads of influential networks. One speaker urges African NGOs to resist “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in the region, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Advocates remark that the extent of foreign involvement has expanded considerably.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As health facilities across Africa report they are facing shortages of birth control, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a warehouse in Europe. A leading family planning organization 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 dogmatic choice “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains in deadlock as local authorities refuse to permit usable products to be destroyed.
‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which halts US aid to groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It was widely expected 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 expand the global gag rule to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the expansion of the rule are expected in early 2026. A expert in child welfare says extending the reach will have “catastrophic impacts”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that new US aid packages being arranged with states on the continent will become dependent on agreeing to the broadened restrictions.
