A Quintet of Crucial Incidents in the Rollback of the Rights of Females in 2025.
This time last year, women’s rights organisations were anticipating a second Trump term. Hardly anyone anticipated. The sheer number and rapid pace of administrative decrees issued from the White House were viewed as a deliberate tactic to induce a state of shock. In many ways it worked – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as groups rushed to fill the gap left by a major funding freeze. But that was just the beginning.
The US administration has been the main instigator, bolstered by relentless activism by ultra-conservative groups exploiting the situation to forge international alliances with like-minded governments.
Often termed the anti-gender movement refers to a global network of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as billionaire families and individuals that work to dismantle progress across a wide spectrum of issues. These include abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They accomplish their goals by influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We examine five instances that influenced the welfare, autonomy, and survival of females globally.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In early spring, six weeks after a prominent humanitarian funder is its funds are blocked, causing international chaos, a top American diplomat announces that the lion's share of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. Career diplomats, former presidents and relief and public health authorities denounce the action, predicting that people will die as a result. Activists say that the dismantling of this institution is not just a financial shortfall, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and family planning and reproductive care. Many organisations say females will bear the brunt by reduced funding, especially in war zones. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Two other major donor nations initiate similar reductions. A director of a global justice organization says a choice to reduce international development funding is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a strategic summit held alongside the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in buoyant mood as they welcome new Washington directives on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the gender equality forum with a somber alert that “the poison of patriarchy” is resurgent, after a study indicates that anti-rights actors are deliberately weakening historic agreements on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa focused on the conventional household and state autonomy triggers anxiety among human rights defenders. In early May, a president and first lady open a significant conference to push back on what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A shortly thereafter, another continental gathering on traditional morals is held. Both events are attended by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to resist “radical global social engineering” of multilateral bodies. In June, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in West Africa, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the scale of their presence has grown significantly.
Contraceptive Destruction Order
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 dispose of millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a European depot. A global sexual health network states that their destruction will deny countless females from family planning options, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. 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”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains in deadlock as host nation officials are blocking usable products to be destroyed.
‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which cuts American funding for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the policy was restored 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 broaden the scope of the policy to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. Further specifics about the policy's widened application are anticipated next year. A director of a major health partnership says extending the reach will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that fresh American assistance deals being discussed with African nations will become contingent upon adopting the new, wider policy.
