Five Major Crucial Incidents in the Rollback of the Freedoms of Women and Girls in 2025.
This time last year, women’s rights organisations were steeling themselves against a new Trump administration. Hardly anyone anticipated. The torrent and swiftness of executive orders coming out of the White House were regarded as a calculated strategy to overwhelm and create panic. In many ways it worked – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as groups rushed to plug the hole left by a freeze on international development funds. But this was only the precursor.
The Washington leadership has been the key driver, aided by relentless activism by deeply conservative factions seizing the opportunity to build worldwide connections with like-minded governments.
This opposition to progressive rights denotes an international coalition of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as wealthy philanthropists and dynasties that work to dismantle forward movement on multiple topics. This covers pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They pursue this agenda via influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We analyze five instances that shaped the protection, honor, and existence of women and girls.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In early spring, a month and a half following a prominent humanitarian funder is frozen, causing turmoil around the world, a senior US official announces that a vast majority of the organization's initiatives will be axed. US diplomats, past leaders and aid and medical specialists condemn the news, cautioning that fatalities will ensue. Activists say that the closure of the organization is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and family planning and reproductive care. A multitude of agencies say females will bear the brunt by shrinking assistance, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, evidence indicates 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. Two other major donor nations announce their own austerity measures. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a choice to reduce international development funding is a move to appease a political ally.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a biannual gathering 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 buoyant mood as they applaud new Washington directives on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the women’s summit with a stark warning that “the venom of male dominance” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are deliberately weakening established norms on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa centered on the conservative family structures and national independence sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In the start of May, a head of state and partner open a large assembly to resist what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A few days later, another continental gathering on conservative ethics is held. Both events are attended by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker urges African NGOs to resist “radical global social engineering” of international organizations. In the following month, a global faith group hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in an African nation, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Campaigners note that the level of external participation has grown significantly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a European depot. A leading family planning organization states that their destruction will deny millions of women and girls from access to birth control, 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 deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “callous and reckless”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains at a standstill as host nation officials refuse to permit the destruction of viable medicines.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reviving the global gag rule, which cuts American funding for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the ban was reimposed in January. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to extend the restrictions 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 anticipated next year. A director of a major health partnership says widening the scope will have “unimaginable effects”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being negotiated with countries in Africa will become contingent upon adopting the broadened restrictions.
