A Quintet of Crucial Incidents in the Erosion of the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
This time last year, organisations advocating for women's rights were preparing for a second Trump term. Hardly anyone anticipated. The volume and speed of administrative decrees emanating from the White House were viewed as a deliberate tactic to paralyze through overload. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as organisations scrambled to plug the hole left by a freeze on international development funds. But the situation was about to worsen.
The Washington leadership has been the primary force, bolstered by fervent lobbying efforts by far-right organisations capitalizing on the climate to forge international alliances with ideological partners.
This opposition to progressive rights denotes an international coalition of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that seek to undermine advances on numerous fronts. This covers access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They pursue this agenda via influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We analyze five episodes that shaped the security, respect, and well-being of the female population.
USAID Dismantled
In March, a month and a half following a key American development organization is halted, causing turmoil around the world, a leading figure in the administration confirms that the lion's share of the body's projects will be terminated. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and relief and public health authorities condemn the news, cautioning that mortality will increase. Rights defenders say that the closure of the organization is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and birth control and maternal healthcare. Many organisations say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by waning support, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, data shows how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with millions more to come. Additional key contributing countries proceed with parallel slashes. A head of a worldwide campaign network 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 faith-based advocacy networks 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 welcome new Washington directives on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a grave caution that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a report shows that groups opposing progressive rights are actively undermining historic agreements on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa centered on the traditional family and national sovereignty sparks alarm among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a national leader and spouse open a large assembly to combat what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A shortly thereafter, another Pan-African conference on traditional morals is held. Both events are attended by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker urges African NGOs to resist “international liberal agenda” of multilateral bodies. In June, a major religious institution hosts a family strengthening conference in the region, an event that health activists say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the level of external participation has increased markedly.
Contraceptive Destruction Order
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a European depot. A leading family planning organization states that their elimination will deprive a huge female population 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 imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “heartless and dangerous”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains in deadlock as the regional government refuse to permit the destruction of viable medicines.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which cuts American funding for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the rule was reinstated 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 governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Further specifics about the expansion of the rule are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says broadening the policy will have “devastating consequences”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that new US aid packages being discussed with African nations will become contingent upon adopting the broadened restrictions.
