Five Critical Key Moments in the Assault on the Rights of Females in 2025.
A year ago, women’s rights organisations were bracing themselves for a second Trump term. Scarcely anyone expected. The volume and speed of administrative decrees issued from the White House were interpreted as a calculated strategy to overwhelm and create panic. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as networks struggled to compensate for the loss left by a major funding freeze. But this merely marked the opening act.
The US administration has been the central catalyst, supported by fervent lobbying efforts by religious fundamentalist networks exploiting the situation to solidify transnational relationships with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights refers to a global network of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as affluent financiers and clans that strive to weaken advances on numerous fronts. This encompasses abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They accomplish their goals by pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We review five moments that impacted the safety, dignity and lives of the female population.
USAID Dismantled
In the month of March, a month and a half following a key American development organization is halted, causing turmoil around the world, a senior US official confirms that nearly all of the body's projects will be terminated. American foreign service officers, past leaders and humanitarian and health experts criticize the move, predicting that people will die as a result. Rights defenders say that the demise of the agency is more than a funding crisis, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Numerous groups say the impact on girls and women will be severe by waning support, especially in war zones. As the year ends, reports confirm how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with millions more to come. Another pair of leading funders initiate similar reductions. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a choice to reduce international development funding is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
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 biannual gathering held alongside the international conference on women's rights. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they welcome new Washington directives on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the women’s summit with a somber alert that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a study indicates that groups opposing progressive rights are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa focused on the traditional family and national sovereignty sparks alarm among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a national leader and spouse open a large assembly to push back on what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A shortly thereafter, another Pan-African conference 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 stand up to “radical global social engineering” of multilateral bodies. In June, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in the region, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the scale of their presence has increased markedly.
Contraceptive Destruction Order
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are facing shortages of birth control, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in July plans to dispose of millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a warehouse in Europe. A leading family planning organization states that their elimination will deprive a huge female population from family planning options, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “heartless and dangerous”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains in deadlock as the regional government are blocking usable products to be destroyed.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It was widely expected 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 broaden the scope of the policy to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Additional information regarding the expansion of the rule are likely forthcoming. A expert in child welfare says widening the scope will have “unimaginable effects”. Pro-choice activists fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the broadened restrictions.
