Five Crucial Incidents in the Attack on the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
This time last year, women’s rights organisations were bracing themselves for a second Trump term. Scarcely anyone expected. The flood and velocity of executive orders coming out of the White House were seen as a deliberate tactic to overwhelm and create panic. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as groups rushed to plug the hole left by a sudden aid suspension. But this was only the precursor.
The American government has been the main instigator, bolstered by fervent lobbying efforts by deeply conservative factions exploiting the situation to forge international alliances with like-minded governments.
The movement against gender equality describes a worldwide alliance of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as billionaire families and individuals that aim to roll back advances on numerous fronts. This encompasses pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They achieve this through pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We look at five moments that affected the safety, dignity and lives of women and girls.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In the month of March, six weeks after a prominent humanitarian funder is halted, causing widespread distress, a top American diplomat announces that a vast majority of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, former presidents and relief and public health authorities criticize the move, predicting that mortality will increase. Rights defenders say that the dismantling of this institution is more than a funding crisis, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and access to contraception and reproductive health services. A multitude of agencies say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by waning support, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, statistics reveal how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with many more millions at risk. Another pair of leading funders initiate similar reductions. A director of a global justice organization says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a strategic summit held alongside the international conference on women's rights. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they welcome changes in American foreign policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the women’s summit with a stark warning that “the poison of patriarchy” is resurgent, after a study indicates that opponents of gender equality are actively undermining longstanding consensus on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the warmer months, a cluster of meetings in Africa themed around the conservative family structures and national independence triggers anxiety among equality campaigners. In May, a president and first lady open a large assembly to push back on what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A soon after, another Pan-African conference on family values is held. Both events are attended by leading American and European conservative activists, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to resist “international liberal agenda” of multilateral bodies. 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 forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Activists observe that the level of external participation has increased markedly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are facing shortages of birth control, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in July plans to destroy a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a storage facility in Belgium. A global sexual health network 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 dogmatic choice “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “callous and reckless”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains at a standstill as local authorities will not allow usable products to be destroyed.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which halts US aid to groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the policy was restored in the first month of the year. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in the autumn, 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. Further specifics about the broader enforcement are expected in early 2026. A leader in global maternal health says extending the reach will have “devastating consequences”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become dependent on agreeing to the new, wider policy.
