Five Critical Landmark Occurrences in the Erosion of the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
Twelve months prior, women’s rights organisations were preparing for a new Trump administration. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The torrent and swiftness of White House mandates emanating from the White House were interpreted as a deliberate tactic to paralyze through overload. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as organisations scrambled to address the shortfall left by a freeze on international development funds. But that was just the beginning.
The Washington leadership has been the main instigator, supported by vigorous campaigning by far-right organisations using the moment to solidify transnational relationships with political allies.
The movement against gender equality signifies a transnational grouping of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as billionaire families and individuals that aim to roll back gains in a variety of areas. These include reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They achieve this through lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We analyze five junctures that impacted the security, respect, and well-being of the female population.
USAID Dismantled
In early spring, six weeks after a key American development organization is halted, causing global disruption, a top American diplomat announces that the lion's share of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists denounce the action, warning that people will die as a result. Human rights advocates say that the closure of the organization is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a savage attack on human rights and birth control and maternal healthcare. Many organisations say the impact on girls and women will be severe by shrinking assistance, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, statistics reveal how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with many more millions at risk. 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.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In the same month, several conservative religious groups meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a strategic summit held in parallel with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in buoyant mood as they welcome changes in American foreign policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the global conference with a stark warning that “the venom of male dominance” is returning, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on key women’s rights issues around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the warmer months, a series of conferences in Africa themed around the conservative family structures and national independence raises concerns among rights advocates. In the start of May, a head of state and partner open a major forum to push back on what they label external influences undermining local norms. A soon after, another regional summit on family values is held. Both events are attended by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including heads of influential networks. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to resist “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of global institutions. In June, a global faith group hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in an African nation, an event that health activists say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Campaigners note that the extent of foreign involvement has grown significantly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are facing shortages of birth control, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in July plans to dispose of millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a storage facility in Belgium. A global sexual health network states that their incineration will prevent a huge female population from family planning options, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “callous and reckless”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains at a standstill as the regional government are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the ban was reimposed in January. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in October, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the expansion of the rule are expected in early 2026. A director of a major health partnership says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that fresh American assistance deals being arranged with states on the continent will become contingent upon adopting the expanded global gag.
