Five Critical Significant Developments in the Challenge to the Rights of Females in 2025.
A year ago, women’s rights organisations were steeling themselves against a second Trump term. Scarcely anyone expected. The flood and velocity of administrative decrees originating in the White House were interpreted as a deliberate tactic to induce a state of shock. In many ways it worked – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as organisations scrambled to compensate for the loss left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But the situation was about to worsen.
The American government has been the primary force, supported by relentless activism by deeply conservative factions seizing the opportunity to build worldwide connections with like-minded governments.
This opposition to progressive rights signifies a transnational grouping of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as affluent financiers and clans that work to dismantle progress across a wide spectrum of issues. This encompasses pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They pursue this agenda via advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to push for parity, disseminating propaganda, and supporting ideologically-matched groups.
We examine five moments that impacted the safety, dignity and lives of girls and women.
USAID Dismantled
In the month of March, shortly after a prominent humanitarian funder is halted, causing turmoil around the world, a top American diplomat states that over eighty percent of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. Career diplomats, past leaders and humanitarian and health experts denounce the action, stating that people will die as a result. Activists say that the demise of the agency is more than a funding crisis, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and birth control and maternal healthcare. A multitude of agencies say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by reduced funding, especially in war zones. As the year ends, data shows 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. Additional key contributing countries follow with their own cuts. 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.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In the same month, several Christian-right organisations meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a strategic summit held alongside the international conference on women's rights. It is an chance to exchange strategies 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 women’s summit with a grave caution that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a report shows that anti-rights actors are actively undermining longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa themed around the conventional household and state autonomy raises concerns among human rights defenders. In early May, a national leader and spouse 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 family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading American and European conservative activists, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to resist “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of multilateral bodies. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in West Africa, an event that health activists say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Activists observe that the extent of foreign involvement has increased markedly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a vast stockpile of birth control held in a European depot. A global sexual health network states that their destruction will deny countless females from family planning options, 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 international emergency medical charity calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains at a standstill as host nation officials are blocking the destruction of viable medicines.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which cuts American funding for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It was anticipated when the rule was reinstated in the first month of the year. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Additional information regarding the policy's widened application are expected in early 2026. A expert in child welfare says widening the scope will have “catastrophic impacts”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that fresh American assistance deals being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the expanded global gag.
