Five Defining Crucial Incidents in the Challenge to the Rights of Females in 2025.
A year ago, groups dedicated to gender equality were bracing themselves for a new Trump administration. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The volume and speed of executive orders coming out of the White House were viewed as a calculated strategy to overwhelm and create panic. This strategy had its intended impact – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as organisations scrambled to fill the gap left by a freeze on international development funds. But that was just the beginning.
The Trump administration has been the central catalyst, bolstered by vigorous campaigning by deeply conservative factions seizing the opportunity to forge international alliances with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights describes a worldwide alliance of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as billionaire families and individuals that strive to weaken progress across a wide spectrum of issues. Areas targeted involve pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They do this by lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We review five junctures that affected the security, respect, and well-being of women and girls.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In early spring, six weeks after a major US aid agency is halted, causing turmoil around the world, a senior US official reveals that a vast majority of the body's projects will be terminated. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists criticize the move, cautioning that fatalities will ensue. Rights defenders say that the closure of the organization is more than a funding crisis, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and family planning and reproductive care. A multitude of agencies say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by reduced funding, especially in war zones. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with many more millions at risk. Two other major donor nations proceed with parallel slashes. A director of a global justice organization says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In March, several Christian-right organisations meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a strategic summit held concurrently 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 buoyant mood as they celebrate shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the global conference with a stark warning that “the venom of male dominance” is back, after a report shows that groups opposing progressive rights are deliberately weakening historic agreements on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa centered on the conservative family structures and national independence raises concerns among equality campaigners. In May, a president and first lady open a significant conference to combat what they label external influences undermining local norms. A soon after, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are attended by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to resist “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in the region, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the level of external participation has grown significantly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
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 dispose of a vast stockpile of birth control held in a warehouse in Europe. A major reproductive health federation states that their destruction will deny countless females from access to birth control, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “callous and reckless”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains at a standstill as the regional government refuse to permit usable products to be destroyed.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reviving the global gag rule, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the policy was restored in January. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in October, the US announces it intends to broaden the scope of the policy to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Additional information regarding the expansion of the rule are anticipated next year. 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.
