Five Defining Significant Developments in the Challenge to the Freedoms of Women and Girls in 2025.
A year ago, feminist advocacy groups were anticipating a Trump presidency sequel. Few were prepared for. The volume and speed of executive orders issued from the White House were seen as a premeditated approach to overwhelm and create panic. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as groups rushed to compensate for the loss left by a freeze on international development funds. But this merely marked the opening act.
The Washington leadership has been the key driver, supported by fervent lobbying efforts by religious fundamentalist networks seizing the opportunity to strengthen global ties with sympathetic regimes.
The movement against gender equality signifies a transnational grouping of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that strive to weaken forward movement on multiple topics. This encompasses abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They pursue this agenda via influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We analyze five moments that influenced the protection, honor, and existence of females globally.
The Dismantling of USAID
In early spring, six weeks after a prominent humanitarian funder is halted, causing turmoil around the world, a senior US official states that a vast majority of the body's projects will be terminated. US diplomats, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists decry the decision, stating that people will die as a result. Activists say that the demise of the agency 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 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 initiate similar reductions. A leader of an international advocacy group says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a move to appease a political ally.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In the same month, several conservative religious groups meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a strategic summit held in parallel with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in buoyant mood as they welcome changes in American foreign policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a somber alert that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa themed around the traditional family and national sovereignty triggers anxiety among rights advocates. In early May, a national leader and spouse open a major forum to resist what they label external influences undermining local norms. A soon after, another continental gathering on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading American and European conservative activists, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker calls on African NGOs to push back against “international liberal agenda” of global institutions. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in the region, an event that health activists say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in July plans to destroy a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a warehouse in Europe. A global sexual health network states that their incineration will prevent millions of women and girls from contraceptive supplies, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “callous and reckless”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains in deadlock as host nation officials refuse to permit the destruction of viable medicines.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reviving the global gag rule, which halts US aid to groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the rule was reinstated 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 extend the restrictions to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Additional information regarding the policy's widened application are likely forthcoming. A expert in child welfare says broadening the policy will have “catastrophic impacts”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that new US aid packages being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the expanded global gag.
