A Quintet of Crucial Incidents in the Challenge to the Freedoms of Women and Girls in 2025.
In the previous year, groups dedicated to gender equality were bracing themselves for a return of Donald Trump to office. Few were prepared for. The sheer number and rapid pace of executive orders emanating from the White House were viewed as a premeditated approach to induce a state of shock. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as organisations scrambled to address the shortfall left by a major funding freeze. But this merely marked the opening act.
The US administration has been the central catalyst, aided by fervent lobbying efforts by deeply conservative factions capitalizing on the climate to forge international alliances with sympathetic regimes.
Often termed the anti-gender movement 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 gains in a variety of areas. This encompasses reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They pursue this agenda via advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We examine five moments that affected the safety, dignity and lives of the female population.
USAID Dismantled
In early spring, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is halted, causing turmoil around the world, a senior US official announces that the lion's share of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, former presidents and aid and medical specialists decry the decision, warning that mortality will increase. Human rights advocates say that the closure of the organization is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. Numerous groups say females will bear the brunt by waning support, especially in war zones. As the year ends, reports confirm how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with millions more to come. Additional key contributing countries initiate similar reductions. A director of a global justice organization 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 Christian-right organisations meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a strategic summit held concurrently with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in buoyant mood as they welcome new Washington directives on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the women’s summit with a grave caution that “the poison of patriarchy” is returning, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the warmer months, a cluster of meetings in Africa focused on the conventional household and state autonomy triggers anxiety among equality campaigners. In early May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to resist what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A soon after, another Pan-African conference on traditional morals is held. Both events are graced by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to push back against “radical global social engineering” of global institutions. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in the region, an event that health activists say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Advocates remark that the scale of their presence has increased markedly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a European depot. A leading family planning organization states that their elimination will deprive countless females from access to birth control, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “heartless and dangerous”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains at a standstill as host nation officials refuse to permit perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the rule was reinstated in the first month of the year. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to extend the restrictions to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Additional information regarding the expansion of the rule are likely forthcoming. A director of a major health partnership says broadening the policy will have “catastrophic impacts”. Pro-choice activists fear that fresh American assistance deals being negotiated with countries in Africa will become contingent upon adopting the expanded global gag.
