Five Defining Crucial Incidents in the Assault on the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
This time last year, women’s rights organisations were anticipating a second Trump term. Hardly anyone anticipated. The torrent and swiftness of presidential directives emanating from the White House were viewed as a deliberate tactic to overwhelm and create panic. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as networks struggled to plug the hole left by a sudden aid suspension. But this merely marked the opening act.
The Trump administration has been the key driver, aided by fervent lobbying efforts by ultra-conservative groups exploiting the situation to solidify transnational relationships with sympathetic regimes.
Often termed the anti-gender movement describes a worldwide alliance of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that aim to roll back advances on numerous fronts. Areas targeted involve access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
They pursue this agenda via pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We look at five moments that affected the safety, dignity and lives of females globally.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In the month of March, shortly after a prominent humanitarian funder is frozen, causing global disruption, a top American diplomat announces that nearly all of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, past leaders and humanitarian and health experts condemn the news, cautioning that people will die as a result. Rights defenders say that the demise of the agency is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a savage attack on human rights and access to contraception and reproductive health services. A multitude of agencies say females will bear the brunt by shrinking assistance, 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 many more millions at risk. Additional key contributing countries announce their own austerity measures. A leader of an international advocacy group says a choice to reduce international development funding is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
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 forum to discuss methods on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in high spirits as they applaud shifts in US policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the global conference with a grave caution that “the venom of male dominance” is returning, after a study indicates that opponents of gender equality are systematically eroding established norms on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the warmer months, a sequence of gatherings in Africa focused on the traditional family and national sovereignty sparks alarm among equality campaigners. In early May, a national leader and spouse open a large assembly to resist what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A soon after, another continental gathering on traditional morals is held. Both events are participated in by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “radical global social engineering” of multilateral bodies. In June, a global faith group hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in an African nation, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Campaigners note that the extent of foreign involvement has increased markedly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are facing shortages of birth control, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a warehouse in Europe. A global sexual health network states that their destruction will deny a huge female population from access to birth control, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains in deadlock as the regional government will not allow perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
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 anticipated when the ban was reimposed in the first month of the year. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in October, the US announces it intends to extend the restrictions to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Further specifics about the expansion of the rule are expected in early 2026. A director of a major health partnership says widening the scope will have “catastrophic impacts”. Pro-choice activists fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being negotiated with countries in Africa will become dependent on agreeing to the broadened restrictions.