A Quintet of Landmark Occurrences in the Challenge to the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
This time last year, feminist advocacy groups were anticipating a new Trump administration. Scarcely anyone expected. The volume and speed of executive orders emanating from the White House were interpreted as a deliberate tactic to cause confusion and fear. The tactic proved effective – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as organisations scrambled to address the shortfall left by a sudden aid suspension. But that was just the beginning.
The American government has been the central catalyst, aided by intense advocacy work by ultra-conservative groups exploiting the situation to solidify transnational relationships with like-minded governments.
The anti-rights movement refers to a global network of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as wealthy philanthropists and dynasties that strive to weaken gains in a variety of areas. This encompasses reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They achieve this through pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We review five instances that shaped the protection, honor, and existence of women and girls.
USAID Dismantled
In the month of March, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is suspended, causing international chaos, a leading figure in the administration states that over eighty percent of the organization's initiatives will be axed. US diplomats, ex-presidents and relief and public health authorities denounce the action, stating that lives will be lost. Activists say that the closure of the organization is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and family planning and reproductive care. A multitude of agencies say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by diminishing aid, especially in conflict areas. 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 many more millions at risk. Two other major donor nations announce their own austerity measures. A leader of an international advocacy group says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In the same month, several Christian-right organisations meet in an luxury Manhattan venue 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 defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in buoyant mood as they applaud shifts in US policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the global conference with a grave caution that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a report shows that opponents of gender equality are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the warmer months, a series of conferences in Africa focused on the conventional household and state autonomy triggers anxiety among equality campaigners. In May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to push back on what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A soon after, another regional summit on conservative ethics is held. Both events are participated in by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in the region, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Campaigners note that the extent of foreign involvement has increased markedly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As health facilities across Africa report they are facing shortages of birth control, including post-rape care packages, 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 family planning options, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A prominent medical humanitarian organization calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains in deadlock as local authorities refuse to permit perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, 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 rule was reinstated in the first month of the year. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. More details on the expansion of the rule are likely forthcoming. A leader in global maternal health says extending the reach will have “unimaginable effects”. Pro-choice activists fear that fresh American assistance deals being negotiated with countries in Africa will become conditional on accepting the broadened restrictions.
