Five Pivotal Events in the Challenge to the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.

In the previous year, feminist advocacy groups were preparing for a new Trump administration. Scarcely anyone expected. The torrent and swiftness of executive orders coming out of the White House were regarded as a calculated strategy to paralyze through overload. The tactic proved effective – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as agencies hastened to compensate for the loss left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But this was only the precursor.

The Washington leadership has been the primary force, aided by relentless activism by far-right organisations using the moment to forge international alliances with sympathetic regimes.

Often termed the anti-gender movement refers to a global network of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as wealthy philanthropists and dynasties that seek to undermine gains in a variety of areas. These include access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.

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

We analyze five moments that affected the welfare, autonomy, and survival of girls and women.

The Dismantling of USAID

In March, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is frozen, causing global disruption, a senior US official confirms that a vast majority of the body's projects will be terminated. American foreign service officers, ex-presidents and humanitarian and health experts denounce the action, warning that lives will be lost. Activists say that the demise of the agency is more than a funding crisis, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Many organisations say females will bear the brunt 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 many more millions at risk. Another pair of leading funders initiate similar reductions. A leader of an international advocacy group says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a move to appease a political ally.

Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting

In March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a two-day conference held in parallel with the international conference on women's rights. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in high spirits as they welcome shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the women’s summit with a somber alert that “the venom of male dominance” is resurgent, after a analysis demonstrates that anti-rights actors are actively undermining historic agreements on key women’s rights issues around the world.

Summits Promoting Conservative Norms

Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa focused on the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In the start of May, a head of state and partner open a large assembly to push back on what they label external influences undermining local norms. A few days later, another continental gathering on conservative ethics is held. Both events are participated in by leading American and European conservative activists, including heads of influential networks. One speaker urges African NGOs to stand up to “radical global social engineering” of global institutions. In June, a global faith group hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in an African nation, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become a stage for criticizing gender equality. Campaigners note that the level of external participation has grown significantly.

US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives

As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are facing shortages of birth control, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a storage facility in Belgium. A major reproductive health federation states that their destruction will deny millions of women and girls from access to birth control, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an politically-motivated move “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “callous and reckless”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains unresolved as host nation officials will not allow the destruction of viable medicines.

‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded

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 came as no surprise when the rule was reinstated 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 governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. More details on the expansion of the rule are likely forthcoming. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that fresh American assistance deals being discussed with African nations will become dependent on agreeing to the new, wider policy.