Five Defining Key Moments in the Rollback of the Rights of Women and Girls in 2025.
Twelve months prior, organisations advocating for women's rights were preparing for a return of Donald Trump to office. Scarcely anyone expected. The volume and speed of presidential directives coming out of the White House were viewed as a premeditated approach to cause confusion and fear. To a large extent, it succeeded – there was chaos, resentment, and burnout as networks struggled to plug the hole left by a freeze on international development funds. But the situation was about to worsen.
The Trump administration has been the main instigator, bolstered by relentless activism by deeply conservative factions exploiting the situation to build worldwide connections with political allies.
This opposition to progressive rights describes a worldwide alliance of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as affluent financiers and clans that aim to roll back progress across a wide spectrum of issues. Areas targeted involve reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.
They do this by advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to advance equality, spreading disinformation, and funding non-profit organisations.
We review five moments that affected the welfare, autonomy, and survival of women and girls.
The Demise of a Major Aid Agency
In early spring, six weeks after a major US aid agency is its funds are blocked, causing international chaos, a leading figure in the administration confirms that over eighty percent of the body's projects will be terminated. US diplomats, former presidents and humanitarian and health experts condemn the news, warning that mortality will increase. Human rights advocates say that the dismantling of this institution is more than a funding crisis, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Many organisations say females will bear the brunt by waning support, especially in war zones. As the year ends, data shows how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Another pair of leading funders follow with their own cuts. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a choice to reduce international development funding is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In March, several Christian-right organisations meet in an high-end hotel in NYC 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 oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in buoyant mood as they applaud shifts in US policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the women’s summit with a somber alert that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is returning, after a study indicates that anti-rights actors are actively undermining historic agreements on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the warmer months, a series of conferences in Africa themed around the conventional household and state autonomy triggers anxiety among rights advocates. In May, a president and first lady open a major forum to combat what they label external influences undermining local norms. A soon after, another continental gathering on traditional morals is held. Both events are participated in by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker urges African NGOs to resist “radical global social engineering” of global institutions. 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 stage for criticizing gender equality. Campaigners note that the scale of their presence has grown significantly.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are running out of contraceptives, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in midsummer plans to destroy a vast stockpile of birth control held in a warehouse in Europe. A global sexual health network states that their elimination will deprive 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 ideological decision “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “heartless and dangerous”. Charities attempt to acquire the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US refuses all offers. The situation remains at a standstill as host nation officials refuse to permit the destruction of viable medicines.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is standard practice for certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the policy was restored in January. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. 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 encompass equity and inclusion initiatives. More details on the policy's widened application are expected in early 2026. A director of a major health partnership says broadening the policy will have “unimaginable effects”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that upcoming Washington funding agreements being discussed with African nations will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.
