A Quintet of Landmark Occurrences in the Attack on the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
This time last year, feminist advocacy groups were anticipating a new Trump administration. Scarcely anyone expected. The flood and velocity of presidential directives coming out of the White House were viewed as a deliberate tactic to cause confusion and fear. This strategy had its intended impact – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as organisations scrambled to address the shortfall left by a freeze on international development funds. But the situation was about to worsen.
The Trump administration has been the main instigator, aided by vigorous campaigning by ultra-conservative groups capitalizing on the climate to strengthen global ties with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights denotes an international coalition of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as affluent financiers and clans that seek to undermine progress across a wide spectrum of issues. These include abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They pursue this agenda via influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We examine five junctures that impacted the protection, honor, and existence of females globally.
USAID Dismantled
In March, six weeks after a key American development organization is frozen, causing global disruption, a leading figure in the administration announces that a vast majority of the body's projects will be terminated. Career diplomats, former presidents and aid and medical specialists denounce the action, warning that people will die as a result. Activists say that the demise of the agency is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and family planning and reproductive care. Numerous groups say the impact on girls and women will be severe by diminishing aid, especially in war zones. As the year ends, reports confirm how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with millions more to come. Two other major donor nations proceed with parallel slashes. A leader of an international advocacy group 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 conservative religious groups meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a biannual gathering held alongside the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in buoyant mood as they welcome new Washington directives on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the gender equality forum with a grave caution that “the venom of male dominance” is returning, after a study indicates that anti-rights actors are systematically eroding historic agreements on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the warmer months, a sequence of gatherings in Africa themed around the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among rights advocates. In the start of May, a national leader and spouse open a major forum to resist what they label external influences undermining local norms. A few days later, another regional summit on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “international liberal agenda” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a family strengthening conference in the region, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Activists observe that the scale of their presence has increased markedly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
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 incinerate a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a European depot. A major reproductive health federation states that their elimination will deprive a huge female population from access to birth control, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. 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 international emergency medical charity calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains in deadlock as host nation officials are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reviving the global gag rule, which cuts American funding for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the policy was restored in January. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in October, the US announces it intends to extend the restrictions to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. More details on the expansion of the rule are likely forthcoming. A director of a major health partnership says broadening the policy will have “catastrophic impacts”. Pro-choice activists fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being arranged with states on the continent will become conditional on accepting the expanded global gag.
