Five Defining Key Moments in the Attack on the Rights of Females in 2025.
This time last year, groups dedicated to gender equality were steeling themselves against a Trump presidency sequel. Hardly anyone anticipated. The flood and velocity of executive orders originating in the White House were interpreted as a premeditated approach to paralyze through overload. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as networks struggled to plug the hole left by a major funding freeze. But the situation was about to worsen.
The Trump administration has been the central catalyst, complemented by fervent lobbying efforts by religious fundamentalist networks exploiting the situation to solidify transnational relationships with like-minded governments.
The anti-rights movement describes a worldwide alliance of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as billionaire families and individuals that seek to undermine forward movement on multiple topics. Areas targeted involve pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They do this by lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We look at five instances that impacted the protection, honor, and existence of the female population.
The Dismantling of USAID
In early spring, shortly after a major US aid agency is its funds are blocked, causing global disruption, a top American diplomat states that nearly all of the body's projects will be terminated. American foreign service officers, ex-presidents and relief and public health authorities condemn the news, predicting that mortality will increase. Human rights advocates say that the dismantling of this institution is more than a funding crisis, it is a savage attack on human rights and birth control and maternal healthcare. Many organisations say females will bear the brunt by waning support, especially in war zones. As the year ends, statistics reveal how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with millions more to come. Another pair of leading funders proceed with parallel slashes. 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 high-end hotel in NYC for a two-day conference held alongside 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 high spirits as they applaud new Washington directives on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the women’s summit with a somber alert that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a study indicates that groups opposing progressive rights are actively undermining longstanding consensus on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the warmer months, a series of conferences in Africa focused on the conservative family structures and national independence triggers anxiety among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a head of state and partner open a major forum to push back on what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A soon after, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are graced by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker urges African NGOs to push back against “international liberal agenda” of global institutions. In June, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in the region, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Activists observe that the extent of foreign involvement has grown significantly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As health facilities across Africa report they are facing shortages of birth control, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a storage facility in Belgium. A global sexual health network states that their elimination will deprive 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 dogmatic choice “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “callous and reckless”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains at a standstill as the regional government refuse to permit perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which cuts American funding for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the ban was reimposed 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 cover diversity programmes. Additional information regarding the expansion of the rule are anticipated next year. A director of a major health partnership says extending the reach will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that new US aid packages being arranged with states on the continent will become contingent upon adopting the new, wider policy.
