Five Critical Key Moments in the Rollback of the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
A year ago, women’s rights organisations were preparing for a return of Donald Trump to office. Scarcely anyone expected. The sheer number and rapid pace of presidential directives coming out of the White House were regarded as a intentional maneuver to paralyze through overload. This strategy had its intended impact – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as groups rushed to fill the gap left by a freeze on international development funds. But this was only the precursor.
The US administration has been the central catalyst, aided by intense advocacy work by religious fundamentalist networks exploiting the situation to strengthen global ties with like-minded governments.
The anti-rights movement signifies a transnational grouping of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that strive to weaken forward movement on multiple topics. Areas targeted involve reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They achieve this through influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We analyze five moments that shaped the safety, dignity and lives of females globally.
The Dismantling of USAID
In the month of March, six weeks after a prominent humanitarian funder is halted, causing widespread distress, a leading figure in the administration announces that over eighty percent of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. Career diplomats, past leaders and humanitarian and health experts condemn the news, cautioning that lives will be lost. Rights defenders say that the dismantling of this institution is not just a financial shortfall, it is a savage attack on human rights and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Numerous groups say females will bear the brunt by diminishing aid, 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. Additional key contributing countries follow with their own cuts. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a choice to reduce international development funding is a move to appease a political ally.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In the same month, several Christian-right organisations meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a two-day conference held alongside the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in high spirits as they welcome new Washington directives on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a stark warning that “the poison of patriarchy” is resurgent, after a report shows that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening established norms on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy triggers anxiety among equality campaigners. In early May, a national leader and spouse open a large assembly to resist what they label external influences undermining local norms. A soon after, another Pan-African conference on family values is held. Both events are graced by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of global institutions. In June, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in the region, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Activists observe that the scale of their presence has expanded considerably.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a storage facility in Belgium. A global sexual health network states that their incineration will prevent countless females from contraceptive supplies, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “callous and reckless”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains in deadlock as local authorities refuse to permit the destruction of viable medicines.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reviving the global gag rule, which halts US aid to groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under 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 encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. Further specifics about the expansion of the rule are likely forthcoming. A director of a major health partnership says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.
