Five Defining Significant Developments in the Rollback of the Freedoms of Women and Girls in This Past Year.
This time last year, feminist advocacy groups were preparing for a new Trump administration. The ensuing chaos was largely unforeseen. The sheer number and rapid pace of executive orders emanating from the White House were seen as a calculated strategy to induce a state of shock. The tactic proved effective – there was bewilderment, fury, and fatigue as networks struggled to address the shortfall left by a sudden aid suspension. But that was just the beginning.
The US administration has been the primary force, supported by vigorous campaigning by far-right organisations exploiting the situation to build worldwide connections with sympathetic regimes.
This opposition to progressive rights signifies a transnational grouping of policymakers, doctrinal establishments, and activist outfits as well as billionaire families and individuals that seek to undermine gains in a variety of areas. These include abortion, LGBTQ rights, trans rights, non-traditional family structures and comprehensive sexuality education.
They pursue this agenda via advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.
We review five junctures that shaped the welfare, autonomy, and survival of girls and women.
USAID Effectively Dismantled
In early spring, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is suspended, causing widespread distress, a senior US official announces that a vast majority of the institution's work will be scrapped. US diplomats, past leaders and humanitarian and health experts decry the decision, warning that fatalities will ensue. Rights defenders say that the demise of the agency is greater than a budgetary issue, it is a vicious offensive against basic liberties and family planning and reproductive care. A multitude of agencies say females will bear the brunt by shrinking assistance, especially in conflict areas. As the year ends, reports confirm how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from illness, famine, inadequate obstetric services, and violence against women, with many more millions at risk. Another pair of leading funders initiate similar reductions. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a move to cut foreign aid drastically is a gesture of alignment with another government's agenda.
Conservative Religious Groups Lobby at UN Women Meeting
In March, several conservative religious groups meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a strategic summit held alongside the UN's flagship gender equality meeting. It is an forum to discuss methods on how to defeat the UN’s “radical agenda”. They are in optimistic frame of mind as they celebrate shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations opens the gender equality forum with a somber alert that “the poison of patriarchy” is back, after a study indicates that groups opposing progressive rights are actively undermining longstanding consensus on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.
African ‘Family Values’ Conferences
Over the summer, a series of conferences in Africa themed around the conservative family structures and national independence triggers anxiety among equality campaigners. In early May, a national leader and spouse open a significant conference to combat what they label criminal foreign forces eroding traditional family values. A soon after, another continental gathering on conservative ethics 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 push back against “radical global social engineering” of international organizations. In the following month, a major religious institution hosts a event focused on reinforcing families in the region, an event that health activists say has become a forum for opposing queer and trans rights. Advocates remark that the extent of foreign involvement has grown significantly.
American Plan to Burn Birth Control
As health facilities across 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 dispose of a vast stockpile of birth control held in a European depot. A global sexual health network states that their elimination will deprive millions of women and girls from contraceptive supplies, and lead to a surge in unplanned pregnancies and dangerous terminations. The organization labels the plan an dogmatic choice “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” and “a deliberate form of reproductive oppression”. A international emergency medical charity calls it “cruel and irresponsible”. NGOs offer to buy 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 are blocking perfectly good supplies to be incinerated.
Widening of the Anti-Abortion Policy
Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits Washington's support for groups that provide, advocate for or advise on abortion services overseas, is commonplace under certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the ban was reimposed in the first month of the year. The administration also reaffirmed membership in a pro-life declaration. But in October, 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 cover diversity programmes. Further specifics about the expansion of the rule are likely forthcoming. A leader in global maternal health says widening the scope will have “devastating consequences”. Pro-choice activists fear that fresh American assistance deals being discussed with African nations will become contingent upon adopting the expanded global gag.
