A Quintet of Pivotal Events in the Challenge to the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
This time last year, women’s rights organisations were anticipating a new Trump administration. Hardly anyone anticipated. The flood and velocity of executive orders coming out of the White House were regarded as a deliberate tactic to cause confusion and fear. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as organisations scrambled to fill the gap left by a freeze on international development funds. But that was just the beginning.
The Trump administration has been the central catalyst, bolstered by vigorous campaigning by far-right organisations exploiting the situation to solidify transnational relationships with political allies.
Often termed the anti-gender movement signifies a transnational grouping of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that aim to roll back progress across a wide spectrum of issues. This encompasses abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They achieve this through lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We examine five junctures that impacted the welfare, autonomy, and survival of the female population.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In March, shortly after a key American development organization is halted, causing global disruption, a senior US official announces that over eighty percent of the body's projects will be terminated. US diplomats, ex-presidents and relief and public health authorities decry the decision, predicting that mortality will increase. Human rights advocates say that the closure of the organization is not just a financial shortfall, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and access to contraception and reproductive health services. A multitude of agencies say the impact on girls and women will be severe by diminishing aid, especially in war zones. 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 proceed with parallel slashes. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance is a move to appease a political ally.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In the same month, several conservative religious groups meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a strategic summit held in parallel with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in buoyant mood as they celebrate shifts in US 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 poison of patriarchy” is back, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are actively undermining historic agreements on key women’s rights issues around the world.
Summits Promoting Conservative Norms
Over the warmer months, a series of conferences in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In May, a head of state and partner open a significant conference to combat what they label external influences undermining local norms. A shortly thereafter, another continental gathering on family values is held. Both events are graced by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker urges African NGOs to resist “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of international organizations. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in an African nation, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Advocates remark that the level of external participation has grown significantly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
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 incinerate millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a European depot. A leading family planning organization states that their destruction will deny millions of women and girls from contraceptive supplies, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a calculated move to control fertility”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can reach their intended destinations, but the US rejects each bid. The situation remains at a standstill as local authorities are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which prohibits Washington's support 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 the first month of the year. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. 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 encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. Additional information regarding the broader enforcement are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says widening the scope will have “catastrophic impacts”. Pro-choice activists fear that new US aid packages being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the broadened restrictions.
