Five Critical Pivotal Events in the Assault on the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.

A year ago, feminist advocacy groups were bracing themselves for a second Trump term. Few were prepared for. The volume and speed of administrative decrees originating in the White House were viewed as a deliberate tactic to paralyze through overload. This strategy had its intended impact – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as agencies hastened to compensate for the loss left by a freeze on international development funds. But this merely marked the opening act.

The Trump administration has been the primary force, aided by fervent lobbying efforts by far-right organisations exploiting the situation to build worldwide connections with like-minded governments.

Often termed the anti-gender movement signifies a transnational grouping of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as affluent financiers and clans that aim to roll back advances on numerous fronts. This covers access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.

They do this by lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.

We examine five junctures that impacted the welfare, autonomy, and survival of the female population.

The Dismantling of USAID

In early spring, a month and a half following a key American development organization is its funds are blocked, causing global disruption, a top American diplomat confirms that a vast majority of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, former presidents and humanitarian and health experts denounce the action, predicting that mortality will increase. Human rights advocates say that the dismantling of this institution is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and family planning and reproductive care. Many organisations say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by waning support, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, reports confirm 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 announce their own austerity measures. 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 March, several conservative religious groups meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a two-day conference held in parallel with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they welcome new Washington directives on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the global conference with a somber alert that “the poison of patriarchy” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on core aspects of gender equality around the world.

Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa

Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa focused on the traditional family and national sovereignty sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to resist 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 US and European anti-rights figures, including heads of influential networks. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to stand up to “radical global social engineering” of global institutions. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in West Africa, an event that health activists say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.

US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives

As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation 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 dogmatic choice “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains at a standstill as the regional government are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.

Broader Restrictions on Aid

Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which halts US aid to groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It came as no surprise 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 extend the restrictions to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. Further specifics about the expansion of the rule are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says widening the scope will have “unimaginable effects”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become dependent on agreeing to the broadened restrictions.