Five Critical Landmark Occurrences in the Erosion of the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
A year ago, women’s rights organisations were bracing themselves for a new Trump administration. Hardly anyone anticipated. The volume and speed of White House mandates originating in the White House were seen as a deliberate tactic to paralyze through overload. In many ways it worked – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as groups rushed to compensate for the loss left by a major funding freeze. But the situation was about to worsen.
The US administration has been the key driver, aided by intense advocacy work by religious fundamentalist networks using the moment to forge international alliances with political allies.
The movement against gender equality signifies a transnational grouping of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as affluent financiers and clans that aim to roll back forward movement on multiple topics. Areas targeted involve abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They do this by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We examine five episodes that influenced the security, respect, and well-being of the female population.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In March, a month and a half following a key American development organization is frozen, causing widespread distress, a top American diplomat states that nearly all of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. Career diplomats, former presidents and humanitarian and health experts decry the decision, cautioning that people will die as a result. Human rights advocates say that the demise of the agency is not just a financial shortfall, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Numerous groups say the impact on girls and women will be severe by shrinking assistance, 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 many more millions at risk. Another pair of leading funders proceed with parallel slashes. A leader of an international advocacy group says a choice to reduce international development funding is a move to appease a political ally.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a strategic summit held alongside the international conference on women's rights. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in buoyant mood as they celebrate new Washington directives on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the women’s summit with a somber alert that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a study indicates that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the warmer months, a sequence of gatherings in Africa focused on the conventional household and state autonomy triggers anxiety among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a president and first lady open a major forum to push back on what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A few days later, another regional summit on conservative ethics is held. Both events are participated in by leading American and European conservative activists, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to stand up to “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in West Africa, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the level of external participation has grown significantly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As health facilities across Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of a vast stockpile of birth control held in a European depot. A global sexual health network states that their destruction will deny millions of women and girls from access to birth control, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “callous and reckless”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains unresolved as host nation officials refuse to permit the destruction of viable medicines.
‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, 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 ban was reimposed 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 expand the global gag rule to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. More details on the broader enforcement are anticipated next year. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “unimaginable effects”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that new US aid packages being discussed with African nations will become dependent on agreeing to the broadened restrictions.
