Five Defining Key Moments in the Attack on the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
In the previous year, feminist advocacy groups were preparing for a new Trump administration. Scarcely anyone expected. The flood and velocity of administrative decrees emanating from the White House were viewed as a intentional maneuver to overwhelm and create panic. In many ways it worked – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as organisations scrambled to plug the hole left by a sudden aid suspension. But this merely marked the opening act.
The Washington leadership has been the main instigator, bolstered by relentless activism by far-right organisations using the moment to forge international alliances with sympathetic regimes.
The anti-rights movement signifies a transnational grouping of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as billionaire families and individuals that strive to weaken advances on numerous fronts. These include access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They do this by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We review five moments that shaped the security, respect, and well-being of girls and women.
USAID Dismantled
In March, six weeks after a prominent humanitarian funder is suspended, causing widespread distress, a senior US official states that nearly all of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, former presidents and aid and medical specialists decry the decision, cautioning that lives will be lost. Rights defenders say that the dismantling of this institution is more than a funding crisis, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. Many organisations say females will bear the brunt by reduced funding, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Another pair of leading funders initiate similar reductions. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a choice to reduce international development funding is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In the same month, several Christian-right organisations meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a two-day conference held concurrently with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in high spirits as they celebrate new Washington directives on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the women’s summit with a stark warning that “the poison of patriarchy” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that groups opposing progressive rights are actively undermining established norms on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa themed around the conventional household and state autonomy triggers anxiety among equality campaigners. In early May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to push back on what they label external influences undermining local norms. A shortly thereafter, another continental gathering on family values is held. Both events are attended by leading American and European conservative activists, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to push back against “international liberal agenda” of international organizations. 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 an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Campaigners note that the extent of foreign involvement has grown significantly.
Contraceptive Destruction Order
As health facilities across Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in July plans to incinerate millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a storage facility in Belgium. A leading family planning organization states that their elimination will deprive millions of women and girls from contraceptive supplies, 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 “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains in deadlock as the regional government will not allow perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which halts US aid to groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under 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 broaden the scope of the policy to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. Additional information regarding the broader enforcement are anticipated next year. A leader in global maternal health says broadening the policy will have “unimaginable effects”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the broadened restrictions.