A Quintet of Pivotal Events in the Rollback of the Freedoms of Women and Girls in 2025.
This time last year, organisations advocating for women's rights were steeling themselves against a return of Donald Trump to office. Few were prepared for. The torrent and swiftness of executive orders coming out of the White House were viewed as a premeditated approach to paralyze through overload. This strategy had its intended impact – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as networks struggled to plug the hole left by a sudden aid suspension. But the situation was about to worsen.
The Washington leadership has been the key driver, supported by relentless activism by ultra-conservative groups using the moment to solidify transnational relationships with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights refers to a global network of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as affluent financiers and clans that aim to roll back forward movement on multiple topics. This encompasses pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They achieve this through lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We review five instances that affected the welfare, autonomy, and survival of the female population.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In early spring, six weeks after a major US aid agency is suspended, causing international chaos, a senior US official confirms that nearly all of the institution's work will be scrapped. American foreign service officers, past leaders and relief and public health authorities criticize the move, warning that mortality will increase. Rights defenders say that the closure of the organization is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. Many organisations say females will bear the brunt by waning support, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, evidence indicates how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with millions more to come. Another pair of leading funders initiate similar reductions. A director of a global justice organization says a choice to reduce international development funding is a move to appease a political ally.
Christian-Right Groups Raise Voices During UN Women Summit
In March, 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 chance to exchange strategies on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they celebrate shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a grave caution that “the poison of patriarchy” is returning, after a report shows that groups opposing progressive rights are systematically eroding established norms 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 sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In the start of May, a president and first lady open a significant conference to resist what they label external influences undermining local norms. A soon after, another Pan-African conference on traditional morals is held. Both events are graced by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker calls on African NGOs to push back against “radical global social engineering” of global institutions. In June, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in West Africa, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the level of external participation has increased markedly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy a vast stockpile of birth control held in a warehouse in Europe. A leading family planning organization states that their elimination will deprive millions of women and girls from contraceptive supplies, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “heartless and dangerous”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains unresolved as the regional government refuse to permit perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reviving the global gag rule, which halts US aid to groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the rule was reinstated in January. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in October, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule 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 likely forthcoming. A leader in global maternal health 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 conditional on accepting the expanded global gag.
