Five Key Moments in the Challenge to the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
In the previous year, groups dedicated to gender equality were preparing for a new Trump administration. Scarcely anyone expected. The sheer number and rapid pace of presidential directives originating in the White House were interpreted as a calculated strategy to overwhelm and create panic. In many ways it worked – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as organisations scrambled to plug the hole left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But that was just the beginning.
The American government has been the central catalyst, complemented by vigorous campaigning by ultra-conservative groups using the moment to forge international alliances with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights refers to a global network of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as wealthy philanthropists and dynasties that work to dismantle progress across a wide spectrum of issues. This covers reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They achieve this through advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We analyze five instances that influenced the welfare, autonomy, and survival of girls and women.
The Dismantling of USAID
In March, six weeks after a key American development organization is halted, causing global disruption, a top American diplomat states that a vast majority of the institution's work will be scrapped. US diplomats, past leaders and relief and public health authorities decry the decision, predicting that lives will be lost. Human rights advocates say that the dismantling of this institution is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. Many organisations say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by waning support, especially in war zones. As the year ends, reports confirm how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with millions more to come. Two other major donor nations proceed with parallel slashes. A director of a global justice organization says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a two-day conference held in parallel with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in high spirits as they celebrate changes in American foreign policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the women’s summit with a grave caution that “the poison of patriarchy” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that anti-rights actors are systematically eroding established norms on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa centered on the traditional family and national sovereignty sparks alarm among rights advocates. In early May, a head of state and partner open a major forum to push back on 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 US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to push back against “international liberal agenda” of global institutions. In June, a major religious institution hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in West Africa, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Advocates remark that the extent of foreign involvement has increased markedly.
Contraceptive Destruction Order
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 midsummer plans to destroy a vast stockpile of birth control held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their elimination will deprive countless females from contraceptive supplies, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. 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 rejects each bid. The situation remains in deadlock as the regional government will not allow usable products to be destroyed.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
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 typical of certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the ban was reimposed in the first month of the year. 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 sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. More details on the policy's widened application are likely forthcoming. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “catastrophic impacts”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that new US aid packages being discussed with African nations will become contingent upon adopting the broadened restrictions.
