Five Major Crucial Incidents in the Erosion of the Rights of Females in 2025.

In the previous year, feminist advocacy groups were preparing for a second Trump term. Hardly anyone anticipated. The sheer number and rapid pace of administrative decrees coming out of the White House were seen as a intentional maneuver to paralyze through overload. This strategy had its intended impact – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as agencies hastened to compensate for the loss left by a sudden aid suspension. But this was only the precursor.

The Trump administration has been the primary force, complemented by vigorous campaigning by ultra-conservative groups exploiting the situation to build worldwide connections with ideological partners.

Often termed the anti-gender movement denotes an international coalition of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as affluent financiers and clans that strive to weaken progress across a wide spectrum of issues. Areas targeted involve reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.

They achieve this through lobbying governments, supporting court cases, discrediting international efforts to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.

We analyze five moments that shaped the safety, dignity and lives of the female population.

USAID Dismantled

In the month of March, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is suspended, causing global disruption, a senior US official states that a vast majority of the organization's initiatives will be axed. Career diplomats, former presidents and aid and medical specialists denounce the action, stating that fatalities will ensue. Rights defenders say that the dismantling of this institution is more than a funding crisis, it is a brutal assault on fundamental freedoms and access to contraception and reproductive health services. A multitude of agencies say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by diminishing aid, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, reports confirm how hundreds of thousands of people have already died from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with many more millions at risk. Another pair of leading funders announce their own austerity measures. A director of a global justice organization says a choice to reduce international development funding is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.

Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting

In March, several Christian-right organisations meet in an upmarket New York hotel 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 counter the UN's progressive policies. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they applaud new Washington directives on social issues and termination of pregnancy. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the gender equality forum with a grave caution that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is back, after a report shows that groups opposing progressive rights are systematically eroding historic agreements 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 focused on the conservative family structures and national independence sparks alarm among rights advocates. In May, a president and first lady open a large assembly to combat what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A few days later, another continental gathering on family values is held. Both events are attended by leading US and European anti-rights figures, including heads of influential networks. One speaker calls on African NGOs to stand up to “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of global institutions. In the following month, a prominent church hosts a family strengthening conference in an African nation, an event that health activists say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Activists observe that the level of external participation has grown significantly.

Contraceptive Destruction Order

As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in midsummer plans to incinerate a significant cache of reproductive health commodities held in a European depot. A major reproductive health federation states that their destruction will deny a huge female population from family planning options, 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”. Aid groups propose purchasing 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 the destruction of viable medicines.

‘Global Gag Rule’ Expanded

Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits Washington's support 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 rule was reinstated in January. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in October, the US announces it intends to extend the restrictions to include governments and multilateral organisations in addition to NGOs, and to cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the broader enforcement are likely forthcoming. 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 arranged with states on the continent will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.