A Quintet of Key Moments in the Assault on the Rights of Females in the Year 2025.
In the previous year, organisations advocating for women's rights were bracing themselves for a second Trump term. Hardly anyone anticipated. The flood and velocity of presidential directives issued from the White House were regarded as a deliberate tactic to induce a state of shock. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as groups rushed to address the shortfall left by a major funding freeze. But this was only the precursor.
The Trump administration has been the key driver, aided by vigorous campaigning by deeply conservative factions exploiting the situation to build worldwide connections with ideological partners.
This opposition to progressive rights refers to a global network of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as affluent financiers and clans that strive to weaken gains in a variety of areas. Areas targeted involve 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 promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We review five moments that impacted the welfare, autonomy, and survival of females globally.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In the month of March, shortly after a major US aid agency is its funds are blocked, causing international chaos, a top American diplomat announces that nearly all of the institution's work will be scrapped. American foreign service officers, former presidents and relief and public health authorities denounce the action, cautioning that people will die as a result. Activists say that the dismantling of this institution is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and family planning and reproductive care. Numerous groups say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by shrinking assistance, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, reports confirm how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with millions more to come. Another pair of leading funders announce their own austerity measures. A leader of an international advocacy group says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance 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 luxury Manhattan venue for a strategic summit held concurrently with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in high spirits as they welcome new Washington directives on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the women’s summit with a stark warning that “the poison of patriarchy” is returning, after a report shows that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening established norms on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa centered on the traditional family and national sovereignty raises concerns among equality campaigners. In early May, a head of state and partner open a significant conference to resist what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A few days later, another Pan-African conference on family values is held. Both events are graced by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to stand up to “international liberal agenda” of international organizations. In June, a prominent church 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. Campaigners note 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 depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy a vast stockpile of birth control held in a storage facility in Belgium. A leading family planning organization states that their incineration will prevent a huge female population from family planning options, 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 “a calculated move to control fertility”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains at a standstill as host nation officials are blocking 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 standard practice for certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the ban was reimposed in January. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in October, 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 encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. Further specifics about the policy's widened application are anticipated next year. A leader in global maternal health says broadening the policy will have “devastating consequences”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that fresh American assistance deals being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the broadened restrictions.
