A Quintet of Pivotal Events in the Challenge to the Freedoms of Women and Girls in 2025.

A year ago, women’s rights organisations were anticipating a new Trump administration. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The flood and velocity of administrative decrees coming out of the White House were viewed as a calculated strategy to paralyze through overload. In many ways it worked – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as groups rushed to plug the hole left by a freeze on international development funds. But that was just the beginning.

The US administration has been the central catalyst, bolstered by fervent lobbying efforts by ultra-conservative groups capitalizing on the climate to solidify transnational relationships with like-minded governments.

Often termed the anti-gender movement describes a worldwide alliance of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that aim to roll back gains in a variety of areas. This encompasses abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.

They pursue this agenda via advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to promote fairness, circulating falsehoods, and resourcing aligned NGOs.

We look at five junctures that impacted the welfare, autonomy, and survival of girls and women.

The Demise of a Major Aid Agency

In early spring, a month and a half following a key American development organization is frozen, causing turmoil around the world, a top American diplomat confirms that the lion's share of the organization's initiatives will be axed. American foreign service officers, former presidents and humanitarian and health experts condemn the news, stating that fatalities will ensue. Rights defenders say that the dismantling of this institution is not just a financial shortfall, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and family planning and reproductive care. Many organisations say females will bear the brunt by diminishing aid, especially in war zones. As the year ends, evidence indicates how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with millions more to come. Additional key contributing countries initiate similar reductions. A leader of an international advocacy group says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.

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 alongside the annual UN Women gathering. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in high spirits as they celebrate new Washington directives on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the global conference with a stark warning that “the poison of patriarchy” is resurgent, after a report shows that groups opposing progressive rights are systematically eroding established norms on key women’s rights issues around the world.

Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa

Over the warmer months, a sequence of gatherings in Africa centered on the conventional household and state autonomy sparks alarm among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to resist what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A few days later, another continental gathering on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including leaders of well-known groups. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of global institutions. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a family strengthening conference in the region, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the level of external participation has increased markedly.

US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives

As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are facing shortages of birth control, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a warehouse in Europe. A leading family planning organization states that their destruction will deny millions of women and girls from contraceptive supplies, and lead to a public health crisis of unwanted pregnancies. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “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 be distributed to those in need, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains unresolved as the regional government refuse to permit perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.

Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy

Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which cuts American funding for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the policy was restored in the first month of the year. 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 likely forthcoming. A leader in global maternal health says extending the reach will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that new US aid packages being discussed with African nations will become dependent on agreeing to the broadened restrictions.