A Quintet of Crucial Incidents in the Challenge to the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Year 2025.
This time last year, feminist advocacy groups were bracing themselves for a return of Donald Trump to office. Hardly anyone anticipated. The volume and speed of White House mandates coming out of the White House were regarded as a calculated strategy to induce a state of shock. This strategy had its intended impact – there was confusion, anger and exhaustion as organisations scrambled to plug the hole left by a abrupt cessation of financial support. But that was just the beginning.
The American government has been the key driver, aided by vigorous campaigning by religious fundamentalist networks capitalizing on the climate to strengthen global ties with political allies.
This opposition to progressive rights refers to a global network of political leaders, religious institutions, civil society groups as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that strive to weaken advances on numerous fronts. These include access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.
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 instances that shaped the protection, honor, and existence of females globally.
USAID Dismantled
In March, shortly after a key American development organization is suspended, causing turmoil around the world, a senior US official states that over eighty percent of the body's projects will be terminated. American foreign service officers, ex-presidents and aid and medical specialists decry the decision, warning that fatalities will ensue. Rights defenders say that the closure of the organization is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a savage attack on human rights and family planning and reproductive care. A multitude of agencies say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by shrinking assistance, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, evidence indicates how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from sickness, hunger, poor pregnancy healthcare, and abuse targeting females, with millions more to come. Two other major donor nations follow with their own cuts. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In the same month, several faith-based advocacy networks meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a biannual gathering held concurrently with the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in buoyant mood 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 stark warning that “the venom of male dominance” is back, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are deliberately weakening longstanding consensus on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the warmer months, a sequence of gatherings in Africa centered on the conservative family structures and national independence sparks alarm among human rights defenders. In early May, a president and first lady open a major forum to resist what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A shortly thereafter, 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 exhorts African NGOs to resist “radical global social engineering” of international organizations. In the following month, a global faith group hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in the region, an event that reproductive rights advocates say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Activists observe that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.
US Threat to Destroy Contraceptives
As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including post-rape care packages, the US announces in July plans to dispose of a vast stockpile of birth control held in a warehouse in Europe. A major reproductive health federation states that their destruction will deny a huge female population from access to birth control, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an ideological decision “about forcing a conservative worldview globally” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “callous and reckless”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains at a standstill as host nation officials are blocking usable products to be destroyed.
‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded
Bringing back the anti-abortion funding ban, which cuts American funding for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It was widely expected when the rule was reinstated in January. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in October, the US announces it intends to expand the global gag rule to include sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Additional information regarding the expansion of the rule are likely forthcoming. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “catastrophic impacts”. Pro-choice activists fear that fresh American assistance deals being negotiated with countries in Africa will become contingent upon adopting the new, wider policy.
