A Quintet of Crucial Incidents in the Attack on the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
This time last year, women’s rights organisations were bracing themselves for a Trump presidency sequel. Hardly anyone anticipated. The flood and velocity of executive orders issued from the White House were viewed as a intentional maneuver to overwhelm and create panic. This strategy had its intended impact – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as agencies hastened to address the shortfall left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But this was only the precursor.
The US administration has been the key driver, complemented by vigorous campaigning by deeply conservative factions seizing the opportunity to build worldwide connections with sympathetic regimes.
The movement against gender equality signifies a transnational grouping of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that aim to roll back advances on numerous fronts. These include reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They pursue this agenda via lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We analyze five moments that affected the safety, dignity and lives of women and girls.
USAID Dismantled
In March, shortly after a key American development organization is its funds are blocked, causing global disruption, a top American diplomat reveals that a vast majority of the body's projects will be terminated. US diplomats, past leaders and aid and medical specialists decry the decision, cautioning that mortality will increase. Rights defenders say that the demise of the agency is not just a financial shortfall, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Numerous groups say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by waning support, especially in war zones. 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. Additional key contributing countries announce their own austerity measures. A leader of an international advocacy group says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance is a move to appease a political ally.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In the same month, several conservative religious groups meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a biannual gathering held alongside the international conference on women's rights. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in buoyant mood as they applaud shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the global conference with a grave caution that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is returning, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are systematically eroding historic agreements on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa themed around the traditional family and national sovereignty raises concerns among human rights defenders. In May, a president and first lady open a significant conference to resist what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A few days later, another continental gathering on conservative ethics is held. Both events are participated in by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to push back against “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of international organizations. In June, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in West Africa, an event that health activists say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Advocates remark that the extent of foreign involvement has increased markedly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in July plans to dispose of a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a warehouse in Europe. A global sexual health network states that their destruction will deny a huge female population from contraceptive supplies, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains in deadlock as host nation officials will not allow 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 standard practice for certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the policy was restored in January. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Further specifics about the policy's widened application are expected in early 2026. A expert in child welfare says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Pro-choice activists fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being discussed with African nations will become contingent upon adopting the new, wider policy.
