Five Defining Crucial Incidents in the Assault on the Rights of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.

In the previous year, feminist advocacy groups were steeling themselves against a Trump presidency sequel. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The sheer number and rapid pace of presidential directives issued from the White House were regarded as a deliberate tactic to paralyze through overload. In many ways it worked – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as groups rushed to plug the hole left by a major funding freeze. But the situation was about to worsen.

The Washington leadership has been the key driver, aided by relentless activism by religious fundamentalist networks using the moment to forge international alliances with sympathetic regimes.

This opposition to progressive rights describes a worldwide alliance of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as billionaire families and individuals that seek to undermine progress across a wide spectrum of issues. This covers pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.

They achieve this through advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to push for parity, disseminating propaganda, and supporting ideologically-matched groups.

We analyze five junctures that affected the welfare, autonomy, and survival of the female population.

USAID Effectively Dismantled

In the month of March, shortly after a prominent humanitarian funder is suspended, causing international chaos, a senior US official announces that over eighty percent of the institution's work will be scrapped. American foreign service officers, former presidents and humanitarian and health experts denounce the action, warning that lives will be lost. Human rights advocates say that the closure of the organization is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and family planning and reproductive care. A multitude of agencies say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by shrinking assistance, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, evidence indicates how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Two other major donor nations announce their own austerity measures. A director of a global justice organization says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.

Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference

In March, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a two-day conference held concurrently with the annual UN Women gathering. It is an chance to exchange strategies on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in high spirits as they welcome changes in American foreign policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the gender equality forum with a somber alert that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a study indicates that opponents of gender equality are deliberately weakening established norms on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.

Summits Promoting Conservative Norms

Over the summer, a sequence of gatherings in Africa themed around the conservative family structures and national independence sparks alarm among equality campaigners. In May, a national leader and spouse open a large assembly to push back on what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A shortly thereafter, 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 calls on African NGOs to resist “international liberal agenda” of international organizations. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in an African nation, an event that health activists say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Campaigners note that the scale of their presence has grown significantly.

Contraceptive Destruction Order

As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in midsummer plans to dispose of millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a European depot. A leading family planning organization states that their incineration will prevent a huge female population from access to birth control, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” 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 fulfill their original purpose, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains in deadlock as host nation officials refuse to permit 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 typical of certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the rule was reinstated in January. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to broaden the scope of the policy to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. More details on the policy's widened application are likely forthcoming. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Pro-choice activists fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being negotiated with countries in Africa will become contingent upon adopting the expanded global gag.