A Quintet of Significant Developments in the Attack on the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
In the previous year, groups dedicated to gender equality were steeling themselves against a Trump presidency sequel. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The sheer number and rapid pace of White House mandates coming out of the White House were seen as a intentional maneuver to induce a state of shock. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as groups rushed to fill the gap left by a sudden aid suspension. But that was just the beginning.
The US administration has been the primary force, aided by intense advocacy work by deeply conservative factions exploiting the situation to forge international alliances with political allies.
The movement against gender equality refers to a global network of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as billionaire families and individuals that aim to roll back forward movement on multiple topics. Areas targeted involve abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They do this by pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We look at five junctures that influenced the welfare, autonomy, and survival of females globally.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In the month of March, shortly after a major US aid agency is frozen, causing turmoil around the world, a senior US official states that the lion's share of the organization's initiatives will be axed. US diplomats, past leaders and relief and public health authorities denounce the action, stating that mortality will increase. Human rights advocates say that the demise of the agency is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a savage attack on human rights and family planning and reproductive care. Many organisations say the impact on girls and women will be severe by waning support, especially in war zones. As the year ends, data shows how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with millions more to come. Another pair of leading funders initiate similar reductions. A director of a global justice organization says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a biannual gathering held alongside the international conference on women's rights. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in high spirits as they welcome changes in American foreign policy 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 resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that groups opposing progressive rights are systematically eroding established norms on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the warmer months, a sequence of gatherings in Africa focused on the conventional household and state autonomy raises concerns among human rights defenders. In May, a national leader and spouse open a major forum to combat what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A shortly thereafter, another Pan-African conference on family values is held. Both events are graced by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including heads of influential networks. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to push back against “radical global social engineering” of international organizations. In June, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in an African nation, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Activists observe that the extent of foreign involvement has increased markedly.
Contraceptive Destruction Order
As health facilities across Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a storage facility in Belgium. A leading family planning organization states that their destruction will deny a huge female population from contraceptive supplies, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains unresolved as the regional government refuse to permit perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reviving the global gag rule, which halts US aid to 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 signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in October, the US announces it intends to extend the restrictions to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Further specifics about the expansion of the rule are anticipated next year. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being discussed with African nations will become dependent on agreeing to the new, wider policy.
