Five Defining Crucial Incidents in the Rollback of the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
Twelve months prior, organisations advocating for women's rights were anticipating a new Trump administration. Few were prepared for. The volume and speed of administrative decrees coming out of the White House were seen as a premeditated approach to paralyze through overload. In many ways it worked – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as networks struggled to plug the hole left by a major funding freeze. But the situation was about to worsen.
The American government has been the key driver, aided by relentless activism by ultra-conservative groups capitalizing on the climate to build worldwide connections with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights refers to a global network of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as billionaire families and individuals that strive to weaken forward movement on multiple topics. This encompasses reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They achieve this through advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to push for parity, disseminating propaganda, and supporting ideologically-matched groups.
We examine five junctures that affected the welfare, autonomy, and survival of the female population.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In early spring, six weeks after a major US aid agency is frozen, causing global disruption, a leading figure in the administration confirms that over eighty percent of the organization's initiatives will be axed. American foreign service officers, past leaders and aid and medical specialists criticize the move, cautioning that lives will be lost. Rights defenders say that the closure of the organization is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a savage attack on human rights and family planning and reproductive care. Many organisations say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by shrinking assistance, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, statistics reveal how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with many more millions at risk. Additional key contributing countries follow with their own cuts. A director of a global justice organization says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In the same month, several Christian-right organisations meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a biannual gathering held alongside the annual UN Women gathering. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in high spirits as they applaud new Washington directives on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the women’s summit with a somber alert that “the poison of patriarchy” is returning, after a analysis demonstrates that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In May, a president and first lady open a large assembly to resist what they label external influences undermining local norms. A few days later, another continental gathering on family values is held. Both events are graced by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to push back against “radical global social engineering” of global institutions. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in West Africa, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are running out of contraceptives, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy a vast stockpile of birth control held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their incineration will prevent a huge female population from contraceptive supplies, 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 “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization 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 unresolved as host nation officials will not allow usable products to be destroyed.
‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits Washington's support 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 the first month of the year. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in October, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. Additional information regarding the broader enforcement are likely forthcoming. A director of a major health partnership says extending the reach will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become dependent on agreeing to the broadened restrictions.
