A Quintet of Pivotal Events in the Challenge to the Freedoms of Women and Girls in 2025.
In the previous year, groups dedicated to gender equality were anticipating a new Trump administration. Scarcely anyone expected. The flood and velocity of executive orders coming out of the White House were viewed as a calculated strategy to paralyze through overload. This strategy had its intended impact – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as networks struggled to compensate for the loss left by a sudden aid suspension. But this was only the precursor.
The Trump administration has been the main instigator, supported by intense advocacy work by far-right organisations exploiting the situation to build worldwide connections with political allies.
Often termed the anti-gender movement signifies a transnational grouping of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that aim to roll back advances on numerous fronts. Areas targeted involve reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They pursue this agenda via advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We look at five moments that influenced the safety, dignity and lives of the female population.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In March, a month and a half following a prominent humanitarian funder is halted, causing international chaos, a leading figure in the administration reveals that over eighty percent of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, past leaders and aid and medical specialists decry the decision, cautioning that fatalities will ensue. Human rights advocates say that the demise of the agency is not just a financial shortfall, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. A multitude of agencies say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by waning support, especially in war zones. 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 a far greater catastrophe looming. Another pair of leading funders follow with their own cuts. A director of a global justice organization says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance is a move to appease a political ally.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In the same month, several Christian-right organisations meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a biannual gathering held concurrently with the international conference on women's rights. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in buoyant mood as they applaud 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 toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a analysis demonstrates that anti-rights actors are actively undermining historic agreements on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the warmer months, a cluster of meetings in Africa centered on the traditional family and national sovereignty triggers anxiety among equality campaigners. In May, a national leader and spouse open a large assembly to combat what they label external influences undermining local norms. A shortly thereafter, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are graced by leading American and European conservative activists, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker calls on African NGOs to resist “radical global social engineering” of global institutions. In the following month, a global faith group hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in an African nation, an event that health activists say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the scale of their presence has grown significantly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are running out of contraceptives, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in July plans to incinerate a vast stockpile of birth control held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation 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 dogmatic choice “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains unresolved as the regional government will not allow perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, 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 the first month of the year. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Additional information regarding the expansion of the rule are anticipated next year. A director of a major health partnership says widening the scope will have “unimaginable effects”. Pro-choice activists fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being arranged with states on the continent will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.
