Five Defining Crucial Incidents in the Challenge to the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
In the previous year, women’s rights organisations were bracing themselves for a return of Donald Trump to office. Scarcely anyone expected. The sheer number and rapid pace of administrative decrees emanating from the White House were seen as a calculated strategy to overwhelm and create panic. The tactic proved effective – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as groups rushed to plug the hole left by a freeze on international development funds. But this was only the precursor.
The Washington leadership has been the key driver, complemented by relentless activism by ultra-conservative groups seizing the opportunity to forge international alliances with like-minded governments.
The movement against gender equality denotes an international coalition of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as billionaire families and individuals that seek to undermine progress across a wide spectrum of issues. Areas targeted involve abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They pursue this agenda via lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We analyze five moments that affected the protection, honor, and existence of females globally.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In the month of March, a month and a half following a prominent humanitarian funder is frozen, causing widespread distress, a top American diplomat confirms that nearly all of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. American foreign service officers, former presidents and relief and public health authorities criticize the move, cautioning that people will die as a result. Rights defenders say that the dismantling of this institution is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and birth control and maternal healthcare. A multitude of agencies say females will bear the brunt by waning support, especially in war zones. 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 head of a worldwide campaign network says a choice to reduce international development funding is a move to appease a political ally.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In the same month, several conservative religious groups meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a two-day conference held in parallel with the annual UN Women gathering. 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 welcome shifts in US policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a stark warning that “the venom of male dominance” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that groups opposing progressive rights are actively undermining established norms on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa themed around the conservative family structures and national independence sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In the start of May, a national leader and spouse open a major forum to resist what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A few days later, another Pan-African conference on traditional morals is held. Both events are graced by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to push back against “radical global social engineering” of global institutions. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in the region, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Activists observe that the scale of their presence has grown significantly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are facing shortages of birth control, 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 countless females from access to birth control, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “heartless and dangerous”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains at a standstill as local authorities will not allow the destruction of viable medicines.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reviving the global gag rule, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the ban was reimposed in the first month of the year. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to broaden the scope of the policy to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Additional information regarding the policy's widened application are expected in early 2026. A expert in child welfare says extending the reach will have “unimaginable effects”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being discussed with African nations will become dependent on agreeing to the expanded global gag.
