A Quintet of Key Moments in the Rollback of the Freedoms of Women and Girls in 2025.
In the previous year, groups dedicated to gender equality were anticipating a second Trump term. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The volume and speed of White House mandates coming out of the White House were seen as a deliberate tactic to overwhelm and create panic. The tactic proved effective – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as organisations scrambled to address the shortfall left by a major funding freeze. But the situation was about to worsen.
The Washington leadership has been the central catalyst, bolstered by relentless activism by ultra-conservative groups capitalizing on the climate to solidify transnational relationships with ideological partners.
Often termed the anti-gender movement denotes an international coalition of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as billionaire families and individuals that strive to weaken gains in a variety of areas. This covers pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They pursue this agenda via influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to push for parity, disseminating propaganda, and supporting ideologically-matched groups.
We look at five moments that influenced the welfare, autonomy, and survival of women and girls.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In early spring, six weeks after a major US aid agency is frozen, causing global disruption, a leading figure in the administration reveals that over eighty percent of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, former presidents and aid and medical specialists condemn the news, cautioning that mortality will increase. Rights defenders say that the dismantling of this institution is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a savage attack on human rights and birth control and maternal healthcare. A multitude of agencies say females will bear the brunt by reduced funding, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with millions more to come. Two other major donor nations announce their own austerity measures. A head of a worldwide campaign network 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 faith-based advocacy networks meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a two-day conference held alongside the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in high spirits as they applaud changes in American foreign policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the global conference with a somber alert that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is resurgent, after a study indicates that opponents of gender equality are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa themed around the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In early May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to push back on what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A shortly thereafter, another continental gathering on traditional morals is held. Both events are participated in by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker urges African NGOs to stand up to “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of international organizations. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in the region, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the scale of their presence has expanded considerably.
Contraceptive Destruction Order
As health facilities across Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a storage facility in Belgium. A leading family planning organization states that their destruction will deny a huge female population from contraceptive supplies, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” 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 be distributed to those in need, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains in deadlock as local authorities refuse to permit the destruction of viable medicines.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which cuts American funding for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the policy was restored in the first month of the year. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in October, the US announces it intends to extend the restrictions to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. Further specifics about the policy's widened application are likely forthcoming. A expert in child welfare says broadening the policy will have “unimaginable effects”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become dependent on agreeing to the new, wider policy.
