Five Defining Pivotal Events in the Erosion of the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
Twelve months prior, organisations advocating for women's rights were preparing for a new Trump administration. Hardly anyone anticipated. The volume and speed of administrative decrees emanating from the White House were seen as a intentional maneuver to overwhelm and create panic. The tactic proved effective – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as groups rushed to fill the gap left by a sudden aid suspension. But this was only the precursor.
The Trump administration has been the central catalyst, bolstered by intense advocacy work by ultra-conservative groups using the moment to strengthen global ties with sympathetic regimes.
Often termed the anti-gender movement refers to a global network of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as affluent financiers and clans that seek to undermine advances on numerous fronts. This encompasses access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They do this by influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We analyze five moments that shaped the security, respect, and well-being of women and girls.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In March, shortly after a prominent humanitarian funder is halted, causing international chaos, a leading figure in the administration reveals that a vast majority of the institution's work will be scrapped. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and relief and public health authorities decry the decision, stating that fatalities will ensue. Human rights advocates say that the demise of the agency is more than a funding crisis, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. A multitude of agencies say the impact on girls and women will be severe by shrinking assistance, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, statistics reveal how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with many more millions at risk. Another pair of leading funders announce their own austerity measures. A director of a global justice organization says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a move to appease a political ally.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a strategic summit held in parallel with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they applaud shifts in US policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a somber alert that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a report shows that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa centered on the traditional family and national sovereignty triggers anxiety among human rights defenders. In May, a president and first lady open a significant conference to combat what they label external influences undermining local norms. A shortly thereafter, another Pan-African conference on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including heads of influential networks. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to stand up to “international liberal agenda” of global institutions. In the following month, a global faith group hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in the region, an event that health activists say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Activists observe that the extent of foreign involvement has grown significantly.
Contraceptive Destruction Order
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are running out of contraceptives, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in July plans to incinerate a vast stockpile of birth control held in a warehouse in Europe. A major reproductive health federation states that their incineration will prevent millions of women and girls from family planning options, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “callous and reckless”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains unresolved as local authorities are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reviving the global gag rule, which halts US aid to groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It came as no surprise 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 include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Further specifics about the broader enforcement are anticipated next year. A director of a major health partnership says extending the reach will have “devastating consequences”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that fresh American assistance deals being arranged with states on the continent will become contingent upon adopting the new, wider policy.