Five Critical Key Moments in the Rollback of the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
Twelve months prior, women’s rights organisations were preparing for a new Trump administration. Hardly anyone anticipated. The volume and speed of White House mandates originating in the White House were regarded as a intentional maneuver to paralyze through overload. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as networks struggled to fill the gap left by a freeze on international development funds. But that was just the beginning.
The Washington leadership has been the main instigator, bolstered by intense advocacy work by religious fundamentalist networks using the moment to forge international alliances with ideological partners.
Often termed the anti-gender movement refers to a global network of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as wealthy philanthropists and dynasties that strive to weaken advances on numerous fronts. This encompasses access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They accomplish their goals by influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We examine five junctures that influenced the welfare, autonomy, and survival of females globally.
The Dismantling of USAID
In March, six weeks after a prominent humanitarian funder is frozen, causing widespread distress, a leading figure in the administration announces that over eighty percent of the body's projects will be terminated. American foreign service officers, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists denounce the action, warning that fatalities will ensue. Rights defenders say that the dismantling of this institution is not just a financial shortfall, it is a savage attack on human rights and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Many organisations say females will bear the brunt by reduced funding, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, reports confirm 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 announce their own austerity measures. A director of a global justice organization says a choice to reduce international development funding is a move to appease a political ally.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In March, 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 chance to exchange strategies on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in high spirits as they celebrate new Washington directives on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the gender equality forum with a grave caution that “the poison of patriarchy” is resurgent, after a study indicates that opponents of gender equality are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa focused on the conventional household and state autonomy triggers anxiety among equality campaigners. In early May, a head of state and partner open a significant conference to combat what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A shortly thereafter, another regional summit on conservative ethics is held. Both events are participated in by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to push back against “international liberal agenda” of global institutions. In June, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in the region, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. 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 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 destruction will deny 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 ideological decision “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains in deadlock as local authorities refuse to permit perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was anticipated 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 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 policy's widened application are expected in early 2026. A leader in global maternal health says extending the reach will have “unimaginable effects”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become contingent upon adopting the new, wider policy.
