Five Critical Landmark Occurrences in the Challenge to the Freedoms of Women and Girls in 2025.

Twelve months prior, feminist advocacy groups were bracing themselves for a new Trump administration. Scarcely anyone expected. The volume and speed of White House mandates emanating from the White House were seen as a premeditated approach to paralyze through overload. In many ways it worked – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as agencies hastened to fill the gap left by a major funding freeze. But that was just the beginning.

The American government has been the key driver, aided by intense advocacy work by deeply conservative factions seizing the opportunity to forge international alliances with political allies.

This opposition to progressive rights refers to a global network of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as ultra-rich backers and donors that seek to undermine gains in a variety of areas. This covers access to termination, gay and trans protections, alternative households, and factual sexual instruction.

They achieve this through influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.

We review five episodes that impacted the welfare, autonomy, and survival of females globally.

The Dismantling of USAID

In the month of March, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is its funds are blocked, causing turmoil around the world, a top American diplomat states that the lion's share of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. Career diplomats, former presidents and relief and public health authorities denounce the action, predicting that fatalities will ensue. Human rights advocates say that the dismantling of this institution is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and birth control and maternal healthcare. Numerous groups say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by shrinking assistance, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, statistics reveal how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Another pair of leading funders proceed with parallel slashes. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.

Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting

In the same month, 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 chance to exchange strategies on how to oppose what they term a UN overreach. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they celebrate changes in American foreign policy on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the global conference with a grave caution that “the venom of male dominance” is back, after a report shows that anti-rights actors are systematically eroding established norms on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.

African ‘Family Values’ Conferences

Over the warmer months, a cluster of meetings in Africa focused on the traditional family and national sovereignty raises concerns among equality campaigners. In May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to resist what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A soon after, another Pan-African conference on family values is held. Both events are participated in by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including presidents of prominent organizations. One speaker exhorts African NGOs to resist “radical global social engineering” of international organizations. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a gathering about supporting traditional households in the region, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Advocates remark that the scale of their presence has increased markedly.

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 July plans to incinerate millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a warehouse in Europe. A leading family planning organization states that their incineration will prevent a huge female population from contraceptive supplies, 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 “a calculated move to control fertility”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “heartless and dangerous”. NGOs offer to buy 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.

Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy

Reviving the global gag rule, 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 anticipated when the ban was reimposed in January. The administration also signed onto a conservative consensus document. But in October, the US announces it intends to extend the restrictions to include national governments and international bodies in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. More details on the broader enforcement are expected in early 2026. A director of a major health partnership says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Reproductive justice campaigners fear that new US aid packages being negotiated with countries in Africa will become conditional on accepting the expanded global gag.