Five Crucial Incidents in the Attack on the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
This time last year, women’s rights organisations were bracing themselves for a return of Donald Trump to office. Scarcely anyone expected. The volume and speed of executive orders originating in the White House were regarded as a calculated strategy to overwhelm and create panic. This strategy had its intended impact – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as networks struggled to fill the gap left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But that was just the beginning.
The Washington leadership has been the main instigator, supported by intense advocacy work by ultra-conservative groups exploiting the situation to strengthen global ties with ideological partners.
Often termed the anti-gender movement denotes an international coalition of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as wealthy philanthropists and dynasties that strive to weaken forward movement on multiple topics. These include reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They pursue this agenda via influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to push for parity, disseminating propaganda, and supporting ideologically-matched groups.
We look at five junctures that affected the protection, honor, and existence of the female population.
The Dismantling of USAID
In the month of March, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is frozen, causing turmoil around the world, a leading figure in the administration confirms that over eighty percent of the institution's work will be scrapped. US diplomats, former presidents and aid and medical specialists decry the decision, cautioning that lives will be lost. Human rights advocates say that the demise of the agency is not just a financial shortfall, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. Many organisations say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by shrinking assistance, especially in war zones. 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. Another pair of leading funders initiate similar reductions. A head of a worldwide campaign network 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 March, several conservative religious groups meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a biannual gathering held alongside the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they applaud shifts in US policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a somber alert that “the venom of male dominance” is resurgent, after a report shows that opponents of gender equality are actively undermining longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa themed around the conventional household and state autonomy triggers anxiety among rights advocates. In the start of May, a head of state and partner open a significant conference to resist what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A few days later, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are attended by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker urges African NGOs to resist “radical global social engineering” of global institutions. In June, a major religious institution hosts a family strengthening conference in an African nation, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the scale of their presence has expanded considerably.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As health facilities across Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their destruction will deny a huge female population from contraceptive supplies, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains unresolved as host nation officials are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which cuts American funding for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the ban was reimposed in January. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in October, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Additional information regarding the broader enforcement are likely forthcoming. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “unimaginable effects”. Pro-choice activists fear that fresh American assistance deals being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.