Five Critical Pivotal Events in the Rollback of the Freedoms of Women and Girls in the Past Year.
A year ago, groups dedicated to gender equality were bracing themselves for a return of Donald Trump to office. Hardly anyone anticipated. The flood and velocity of presidential directives originating in the White House were regarded as a deliberate tactic to overwhelm and create panic. In many ways it worked – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as networks struggled to compensate for the loss left by a sudden aid suspension. But this merely marked the opening act.
The US administration has been the central catalyst, bolstered by fervent lobbying efforts by deeply conservative factions exploiting the situation to forge international alliances with like-minded governments.
Often termed the anti-gender movement refers to a global network of government figures, churches, and advocacy collectives as well as billionaire families and individuals that seek to undermine forward movement on multiple topics. This covers pro-choice policies, equality for sexual minorities, gender identity recognition, and inclusive relationship teaching.
They accomplish their goals by influencing policymakers, funding litigation, undermining global initiatives to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We look at five moments that shaped the welfare, autonomy, and survival of women and girls.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In the month of March, six weeks after a major US aid agency is its funds are blocked, causing widespread distress, a senior US official confirms that over eighty percent of the agency’s programmes will be eliminated. US diplomats, past leaders and relief and public health authorities condemn the news, warning that lives will be lost. Rights defenders say that the dismantling of this institution is not just a financial shortfall, it is a savage attack on human rights and birth control and maternal healthcare. Numerous groups say the impact on girls and women will be severe by diminishing aid, especially in war zones. As the year ends, reports confirm how a tremendous loss of life has already occurred from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with millions more to come. Another pair of leading funders announce their own austerity measures. A leader of an international advocacy group says a choice to reduce international development funding is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.
Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference
In March, several conservative religious groups meet in an luxury Manhattan venue for a biannual gathering held alongside the international conference on women's rights. It is an opportunity to share tactics on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in buoyant mood as they celebrate shifts in US policy on gender, diversity and abortion. Meanwhile, the world's top diplomat opens the gender equality forum with a somber alert that “the venom of male dominance” is back, after a report shows that opponents of gender equality are actively undermining historic agreements on core aspects of gender equality around the world.
Conferences on Traditional Values in Africa
Over the warmer months, a sequence of gatherings in Africa centered on the traditional family and national sovereignty sparks alarm among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a head of state and partner open a significant conference to combat what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A few days later, another regional summit on traditional morals is held. Both events are participated in by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker urges African NGOs to resist “worldwide progressive social restructuring” of international organizations. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in the region, an event that pro-choice campaigners say has become an anti-LGBTQ, anti-gender platform. Campaigners note that the scale of their presence has expanded considerably.
Contraceptive Destruction Order
As medical centers in numerous African countries report they are depleting their stocks of family planning supplies, including prophylaxis for assault victims, the US announces in July plans to dispose of millions of dollars worth of contraceptives held in a storage facility in Belgium. A global sexual health network states that their elimination will deprive millions of women and girls from access to birth control, and lead to hundreds of thousands of unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about imposing an anti-rights agenda on the entire world” and “an intentional act of reproductive coercion”. A renowned doctors' group calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. Aid groups propose purchasing the contraceptives so they can fulfill their original purpose, but the US declines every proposal. The situation remains in deadlock as local authorities are blocking usable products to be destroyed.
Broader Restrictions on Aid
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which halts US aid to groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the rule was reinstated in January. 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 sovereign states and UN agencies in addition to NGOs, and to include DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) projects. More details on the policy's widened application are anticipated next year. A expert in child welfare says extending the reach will have “catastrophic impacts”. Advocates for bodily autonomy fear that new US aid packages being arranged with states on the continent will become conditional on accepting the new, wider policy.
