Five Crucial Incidents in the Erosion of the Freedoms of Women and Girls in 2025.
Twelve months prior, organisations advocating for women's rights were steeling themselves against a new Trump administration. Scarcely anyone expected. The flood and velocity of White House mandates emanating from the White House were viewed as a intentional maneuver to cause confusion and fear. This strategy had its intended impact – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as groups rushed to fill the gap left by a sudden aid suspension. But this merely marked the opening act.
The American government has been the main instigator, supported by fervent lobbying efforts by far-right organisations seizing the opportunity to forge international alliances with ideological partners.
This opposition to progressive rights signifies a transnational grouping of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that seek to undermine forward movement on multiple topics. This encompasses pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They pursue this agenda via advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We review five moments that influenced the security, respect, and well-being of women and girls.
The Dismantling of USAID
In the month of March, six weeks after a key American development organization is halted, causing international chaos, a senior US official reveals that a vast majority of the institution's work will be scrapped. Career diplomats, former presidents and aid and medical specialists denounce the action, predicting that mortality will increase. Rights defenders say that the demise of the agency is more than a funding crisis, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and access to contraception and reproductive health services. A multitude of agencies say females will bear the brunt by shrinking assistance, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, statistics reveal how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with many more millions at risk. 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.
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 two-day conference held concurrently 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 high spirits as they applaud new Washington directives 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 back, after a analysis demonstrates that groups opposing progressive rights are deliberately weakening established norms on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa focused on the conventional household and state autonomy raises concerns among human rights defenders. In early May, a president and first lady open a major forum to push back on what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A shortly thereafter, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are graced by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “radical global social engineering” of international organizations. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in the region, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Advocates remark that the scale of their presence has grown significantly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in July plans to destroy a vast stockpile of birth control held in a European depot. A major reproductive health federation states that their incineration will prevent countless females from family planning options, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “callous and reckless”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains unresolved as the regional government are blocking the destruction of viable medicines.
‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded
Reviving the global gag rule, which halts US aid to groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the rule was reinstated in January. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. But in October, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about 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 expanded global gag.
