Five Defining Key Moments in the Assault on the Rights of Females in the Year 2025.
This time last year, groups dedicated to gender equality were bracing themselves for a Trump presidency sequel. Scarcely anyone expected. The sheer number and rapid pace of White House mandates coming out of the White House were seen as a premeditated approach to paralyze through overload. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as organisations scrambled to compensate for the loss left by a sudden aid suspension. But this was only the precursor.
The Trump administration has been the primary force, complemented by intense advocacy work by deeply conservative factions using the moment to forge international alliances with sympathetic regimes.
The anti-rights movement refers to a global network of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that aim to roll back gains in a variety of areas. Areas targeted involve 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 foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We analyze five junctures that affected the safety, dignity and lives of women and girls.
USAID Dismantled
In the month of March, six weeks after a major US aid agency is halted, causing international chaos, a senior US official states that a vast majority of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. Career diplomats, past leaders and relief and public health authorities denounce the action, cautioning that lives will be lost. Rights defenders say that the demise of the agency is more than a funding crisis, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and family planning and reproductive care. A multitude of agencies say females will bear the brunt by shrinking assistance, especially in war zones. As the year ends, data shows how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred 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 choice to reduce international development funding is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In the same month, several conservative religious groups meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a two-day conference held alongside the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they celebrate shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the global conference with a grave caution that “the poison of patriarchy” is resurgent, after a study indicates that opponents of gender equality are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a national leader and spouse open a large assembly to combat what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A few days later, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are participated in by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker urges African NGOs to stand up to “radical global social engineering” of multilateral bodies. In June, a major religious institution hosts a family strengthening conference in an African nation, an event that health activists say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Advocates remark that the extent of foreign involvement has expanded considerably.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As health facilities across Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in July plans to dispose of a vast stockpile of birth control held in a warehouse in Europe. A global sexual health network states that their destruction will deny millions of women and girls from contraceptive supplies, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “heartless and dangerous”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains in deadlock as local authorities refuse to permit usable products to be destroyed.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which cuts American funding for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the rule was reinstated in the first month of the year. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in October, the US announces it intends to extend the restrictions to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the broader enforcement are likely forthcoming. A director of a major health partnership says broadening the policy will have “unimaginable effects”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being discussed with African nations will become contingent upon adopting the expanded global gag.
