Five Key Moments in the Attack on the Rights of Females in the Year 2025.
This time last year, organisations advocating for women's rights were steeling themselves against a return of Donald Trump to office. Hardly anyone anticipated. The flood and velocity of executive orders coming out of the White House were interpreted as a premeditated approach to cause confusion and fear. In many ways it worked – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as agencies hastened to plug the hole left by a sudden aid suspension. But this merely marked the opening act.
The US administration has been the key driver, bolstered by intense advocacy work by deeply conservative factions using the moment to solidify transnational relationships with political allies.
Often termed the anti-gender movement refers to a global network of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that seek to undermine gains in a variety of areas. This covers abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They pursue this agenda via pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We analyze five episodes that affected the welfare, autonomy, and survival of women and girls.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In March, shortly after a prominent humanitarian funder is suspended, causing international chaos, a top American diplomat announces that the lion's share of the institution's work will be scrapped. American foreign service officers, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists condemn the news, predicting that fatalities will ensue. Rights defenders say that the demise of the agency is more than a funding crisis, it is a savage attack on human rights and family planning and reproductive care. Numerous groups say the impact on girls and women will be severe by reduced funding, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, reports confirm how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Additional key contributing countries announce their own austerity measures. A leader of an international advocacy group says a choice to reduce international development funding is a move to appease a political ally.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a biannual gathering held concurrently with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in buoyant mood as they welcome shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the global conference with a grave caution that “the poison of patriarchy” is back, after a report shows that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening established norms on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa themed around the conservative family structures and national independence raises concerns among equality campaigners. In May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to push back on what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A few days later, another continental gathering on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “international liberal agenda” of international organizations. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a family strengthening conference in an African nation, an event that health activists say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Activists observe that the level of external participation has increased markedly.
Contraceptive Destruction Order
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a vast stockpile of birth control held in a storage facility in Belgium. A leading family planning organization states that their elimination will deprive millions of women and girls from family planning options, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “callous and reckless”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains at a standstill as host nation officials refuse to permit perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which cuts American funding for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the ban was reimposed in January. 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 include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Further specifics about the broader enforcement are likely forthcoming. A director of a major health partnership says broadening the policy will have “catastrophic impacts”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being arranged with states on the continent will become conditional on accepting the expanded global gag.
