Five Major Pivotal Events in the Assault on the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
This time last year, feminist advocacy groups were anticipating a return of Donald Trump to office. Few were prepared for. The flood and velocity of administrative decrees originating in the White House were regarded as a intentional maneuver to overwhelm and create panic. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as groups rushed to fill the gap left by a major funding freeze. But that was just the beginning.
The American government has been the primary force, bolstered by intense advocacy work by far-right organisations seizing the opportunity to build worldwide connections with ideological partners.
This opposition to progressive rights signifies a transnational grouping of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as affluent financiers and clans that strive to weaken gains in a variety of areas. This covers pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They do this by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We review five episodes that affected the protection, honor, and existence of girls and women.
The Dismantling of USAID
In early spring, six weeks after a major US aid agency is its funds are blocked, causing international chaos, a senior US official reveals that the lion's share of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists denounce the action, predicting that people will die as a result. Activists 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, evidence indicates how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with millions more to come. Two other major donor nations follow with their own cuts. 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.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In March, several Christian-right organisations meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a two-day conference held concurrently with the international conference on women's rights. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in buoyant mood as they welcome shifts in US policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the global conference with a somber alert that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a report shows that groups opposing progressive rights are actively undermining historic agreements on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the warmer months, a cluster of meetings in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among rights advocates. In the start of May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to resist what they label external influences undermining local norms. A shortly thereafter, another continental gathering on family values 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 resist “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of international organizations. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a family strengthening conference in West Africa, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Activists observe that the extent of foreign involvement has grown significantly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a warehouse in Europe. A major reproductive health federation states that their incineration will prevent a huge female population from family planning options, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “heartless and dangerous”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains at a standstill as host nation officials refuse to permit the destruction of viable medicines.
‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded
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 policy was restored in January. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to extend the restrictions to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the broader enforcement are expected in early 2026. A expert in child welfare says broadening the policy will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that fresh American assistance deals being arranged with states on the continent will become dependent on agreeing to the new, wider policy.
