Five Pivotal Events in the Challenge to the Rights of Females in the Past Year.
This time last year, women’s rights organisations were bracing themselves for a new Trump administration. Scarcely anyone expected. The flood and velocity of White House mandates emanating from the White House were interpreted as a deliberate tactic to overwhelm and create panic. The tactic proved effective – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as groups rushed to compensate for the loss left by a major funding freeze. But that was just the beginning.
The Washington leadership has been the primary force, bolstered by vigorous campaigning by far-right organisations using the moment to forge international alliances with sympathetic regimes.
The movement against gender equality signifies a transnational grouping of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as affluent financiers and clans that strive to weaken progress across a wide spectrum of issues. These include pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They pursue this agenda via pressuring states, backing lawsuits, disparaging UN work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.
We look at five junctures that influenced the welfare, autonomy, and survival of women and girls.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In the month of March, shortly after a prominent humanitarian funder is halted, causing global disruption, a top American diplomat announces that a vast majority of the body's projects will be terminated. Career diplomats, past leaders and relief and public health authorities denounce the action, cautioning that mortality will increase. Rights defenders say that the demise of the agency is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and birth control and maternal healthcare. Many organisations say females will bear the brunt by waning support, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with millions more to come. Another pair of leading funders proceed with parallel slashes. A director of a global justice organization says a choice to reduce international development funding is a move to appease a political ally.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In March, several Christian-right organisations meet in an high-end hotel in NYC for a two-day conference held concurrently with the international conference on women's rights. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they applaud changes in American foreign policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the global conference with a somber alert that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is resurgent, after a study indicates that opponents of gender equality are systematically eroding established norms on key women’s rights issues around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the warmer months, a sequence of gatherings in Africa focused on the conservative family structures and national independence sparks alarm among equality campaigners. In May, a national leader and spouse open a major forum to resist what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A few days later, another continental gathering on traditional morals is held. Both events are graced by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “radical global social engineering” of international organizations. In June, a prominent church hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in an African nation, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Campaigners note that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are running out of contraceptives, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in July plans to incinerate a vast stockpile of birth control held in a warehouse in Europe. A global sexual health network states that their incineration will prevent millions of women and girls from family planning options, 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 “heartless and dangerous”. NGOs offer to buy the contraceptives so they can be distributed to those in need, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains in deadlock as local authorities are blocking usable products to be destroyed.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reviving the global gag rule, which cuts American funding for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the policy was restored in January. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. But in the autumn, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. More details on the policy's widened application are expected in early 2026. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “catastrophic impacts”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being arranged with states on the continent will become dependent on agreeing to the new, wider policy.
