A Quintet of Significant Developments in the Challenge to the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
Twelve months prior, organisations advocating for women's rights were steeling themselves against a new Trump administration. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The sheer number and rapid pace of administrative decrees issued from the White House were regarded as a deliberate tactic to cause confusion and fear. In many ways it worked – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as agencies hastened to compensate for the loss left by a sudden aid suspension. But that was just the beginning.
The Trump administration has been the primary force, complemented by relentless activism by far-right organisations seizing the opportunity to build worldwide connections with ideological partners.
This opposition to progressive rights signifies a transnational grouping of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as wealthy philanthropists and dynasties that strive to weaken progress across a wide spectrum of issues. These include reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They accomplish their goals by pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We look at five episodes that influenced the welfare, autonomy, and survival of females globally.
The Dismantling of USAID
In March, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is suspended, causing turmoil around the world, a senior US official reveals that a vast majority of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists decry the decision, warning that mortality will increase. 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 the impact on girls and women will be severe by waning support, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, data shows how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with many more millions at risk. Additional key contributing countries follow with their own cuts. A director of a global justice organization says a choice to reduce international development funding is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a two-day conference held alongside the international conference on women's rights. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in high spirits as they applaud shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the global conference with a grave caution that “the venom of male dominance” is resurgent, after a study indicates that groups opposing progressive rights are systematically eroding longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa focused on the traditional family and national sovereignty sparks alarm among rights advocates. In early May, a head of state and partner open a significant conference to push back on what they label external influences undermining local norms. A few days later, another Pan-African conference on traditional morals 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 stand up to “international liberal agenda” of global institutions. In June, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in West Africa, 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.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are running out of contraceptives, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of 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 access to birth control, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “callous and reckless”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains at a standstill as local authorities are blocking the destruction of viable medicines.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which cuts American funding for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the rule was reinstated in the first month of the year. 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 cover diversity programmes. Additional information regarding the policy's widened application are likely forthcoming. A expert in child welfare says extending the reach will have “catastrophic impacts”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.
