Five Defining Pivotal Events in the Erosion of the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
A year ago, women’s rights organisations were steeling themselves against a new Trump administration. Hardly anyone anticipated. The sheer number and rapid pace of executive orders emanating from the White House were interpreted as a intentional maneuver to induce a state of shock. In many ways it worked – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as groups rushed to compensate for the loss left by a freeze on international development funds. But the situation was about to worsen.
The Washington leadership has been the key driver, supported by vigorous campaigning by far-right organisations exploiting the situation to strengthen global ties with political allies.
The movement against gender equality describes a worldwide alliance of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that work to dismantle gains in a variety of areas. This encompasses abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They pursue this agenda via lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We look at five instances that affected the security, respect, and well-being of females globally.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In early spring, shortly after a prominent humanitarian funder is its funds are blocked, causing global disruption, a top American diplomat announces that nearly all of the institution's work will be scrapped. American foreign service officers, ex-presidents and relief and public health authorities condemn the news, cautioning that lives will be lost. Human rights advocates say that the dismantling of this institution is more than a funding crisis, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and family planning and reproductive care. Many organisations say the impact on girls and women will be severe by diminishing aid, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, data shows how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Additional key contributing countries initiate similar reductions. 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 the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a biannual gathering held concurrently with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in high spirits as they celebrate changes in American foreign policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a stark warning that “the venom of male dominance” is returning, after a study indicates that groups opposing progressive rights are deliberately weakening historic agreements on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa themed around the traditional family and national sovereignty sparks alarm among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a national leader and spouse open a major forum to combat what they label external influences undermining local norms. A few days later, another Pan-African conference on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading American and European conservative activists, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to resist “radical global social engineering” of multilateral bodies. In June, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in West Africa, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Campaigners note that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
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 incinerate a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a storage facility in Belgium. A leading family planning organization states that their destruction will deny countless females 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 imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains unresolved as the regional government are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reviving the global gag rule, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It was anticipated 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 broaden the scope of the policy to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. More details on the expansion of the rule are expected in early 2026. A leader in global maternal health says broadening the policy will have “catastrophic impacts”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that fresh American assistance deals being discussed with African nations will become contingent upon adopting the expanded global gag.
