Five Key Moments in the Assault on the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
Twelve months prior, organisations advocating for women's rights were anticipating a new Trump administration. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The torrent and swiftness of administrative decrees originating in the White House were regarded as a intentional maneuver to cause confusion and fear. In many ways it worked – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as networks struggled to plug the hole left by a sudden aid suspension. But that was just the beginning.
The Trump administration has been the central catalyst, complemented by fervent lobbying efforts by ultra-conservative groups seizing the opportunity to strengthen global ties with ideological partners.
The anti-rights movement describes a worldwide alliance of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as affluent financiers and clans that strive to weaken gains in a variety of areas. This encompasses pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They accomplish their goals by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We look at five instances that shaped the protection, honor, and existence of women and girls.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In March, six weeks after a key American development organization is frozen, causing turmoil around the world, a leading figure in the administration announces that over eighty percent of the body's projects will be terminated. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and humanitarian and health experts decry the decision, predicting that fatalities will ensue. Activists say that the closure of the organization is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a savage attack on human rights and family planning and reproductive care. Numerous groups say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by reduced funding, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, data shows how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with millions more to come. Another pair of leading funders announce their own austerity measures. 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.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In the same month, several Christian-right organisations 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 opportunity to share tactics on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they applaud shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the women’s summit with a grave caution that “the venom of male dominance” is back, after a study indicates that anti-rights actors are systematically eroding longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa focused on the conservative family structures and national independence triggers anxiety among equality campaigners. In early May, a president and first lady open a significant conference to push back on what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A soon after, another Pan-African conference on conservative ethics is held. Both events are participated in by leading American and European conservative activists, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to resist “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of international organizations. In June, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in West Africa, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Campaigners note that the scale of their presence has increased markedly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are facing shortages of birth control, 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 countless females from access to birth control, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains in deadlock as the regional government are blocking the destruction of viable medicines.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reviving the global gag rule, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under 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 expand the global gag rule to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Further specifics about the policy's widened application are likely forthcoming. A leader in global maternal health says extending the reach will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that fresh American assistance deals being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.
