Five Defining Pivotal Events in the Rollback of the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
A year ago, organisations advocating for women's rights were anticipating a second Trump term. Few were prepared for. The flood and velocity of executive orders issued from the White House were seen as a premeditated approach to overwhelm and create panic. This strategy had its intended impact – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as organisations scrambled to compensate for the loss left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But the situation was about to worsen.
The Trump administration has been the main instigator, aided by relentless activism by deeply conservative factions seizing the opportunity to strengthen global ties with sympathetic regimes.
Often termed the anti-gender movement signifies a transnational grouping of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as billionaire families and individuals that strive to weaken gains in a variety of areas. This encompasses abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They accomplish their goals by influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We examine five instances that affected the welfare, autonomy, and survival of the female population.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In March, shortly after a prominent humanitarian funder is suspended, causing turmoil around the world, a top American diplomat states that a vast majority of the body's projects will be terminated. Career diplomats, past leaders and relief and public health authorities criticize the move, cautioning that fatalities will ensue. Activists say that the demise of the agency is not just a financial shortfall, 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 diminishing aid, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, statistics reveal how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Another pair of leading funders follow with their own cuts. A leader of an international advocacy group says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In March, several conservative religious groups meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a biannual gathering held in parallel 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 shifts in US policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the global conference with a stark warning that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are deliberately weakening historic agreements on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa focused on the traditional family and national sovereignty triggers anxiety among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a president and first lady open a significant conference to combat what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A soon after, another continental gathering on traditional morals is held. Both events are graced by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of international organizations. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a family strengthening conference in an African nation, an event that health activists say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the extent of foreign involvement has increased markedly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As health facilities across Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a storage facility in Belgium. A leading family planning organization states that their elimination will deprive 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 dogmatic choice “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains unresolved as host nation officials will not allow the destruction of viable medicines.
‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the rule was reinstated in January. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in October, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the expansion of the rule are expected in early 2026. A director of a major health partnership says broadening the policy will have “devastating consequences”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that new US aid packages being arranged with states on the continent will become dependent on agreeing to the new, wider policy.
