A Quintet of Key Moments in the Assault on the Freedoms of Women and Girls in 2025.
A year ago, groups dedicated to gender equality were steeling themselves against a second Trump term. Hardly anyone anticipated. The torrent and swiftness of presidential directives originating in the White House were regarded as a premeditated approach to induce a state of shock. In many ways it worked – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as organisations scrambled to fill the gap left by a major funding freeze. But this was only the precursor.
The American government has been the key driver, aided by fervent lobbying efforts by ultra-conservative groups seizing the opportunity to build worldwide connections with ideological partners.
This opposition to progressive rights signifies a transnational grouping of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as affluent financiers and clans that aim to roll back advances on numerous fronts. This covers reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They achieve this through pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We look at five episodes that impacted the safety, dignity and lives of the female population.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In early spring, a month and a half following a key American development organization is frozen, causing widespread distress, a leading figure in the administration announces that the lion's share of the body's projects will be terminated. American foreign service officers, ex-presidents and relief and public health authorities denounce the action, stating that fatalities will ensue. Activists say that the closure of the organization is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a savage attack on human rights and birth control and maternal healthcare. Numerous groups say the impact on girls and women will be severe by diminishing aid, especially in war zones. As the year ends, data shows how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Two other major donor nations initiate similar reductions. A leader of an international advocacy group says a choice to reduce international development funding is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a biannual gathering held alongside the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in high spirits as they applaud shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the global conference with a somber alert that “the poison of patriarchy” is back, after a report shows that opponents of gender equality are systematically eroding established norms on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa themed around the traditional family and national sovereignty sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In early May, a national leader and spouse open a large assembly to resist what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A shortly thereafter, another regional summit on family values is held. Both events are attended by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker urges African NGOs to stand up to “international liberal agenda” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a global faith group hosts a family strengthening conference in West Africa, an event that health activists say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Activists observe that the scale of their presence has grown significantly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As health facilities across Africa report they are facing shortages of birth control, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a warehouse in Europe. A global sexual health network states that their elimination will deprive countless females 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 imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains at a standstill as local authorities are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
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 anticipated when the policy was restored in January. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. More details on the expansion of the rule are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says widening the scope will have “unimaginable effects”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become conditional on accepting the expanded global gag.
