Five Defining Significant Developments in the Challenge to the Freedoms of Women and Girls in This Past Year.

In the previous year, groups dedicated to gender equality were anticipating a return of Donald Trump to office. Few were prepared for. The volume and speed of presidential directives issued from the White House were viewed as a calculated strategy to cause confusion and fear. In many ways it worked – there was disarray, outrage, and weariness as organisations scrambled to compensate for the loss left by a major funding freeze. But this was only the precursor.

The Trump administration has been the key driver, complemented by vigorous campaigning by religious fundamentalist networks capitalizing on the climate to build worldwide connections with ideological partners.

The movement against gender equality signifies a transnational grouping of elected officials, faith-based bodies, non-governmental organisations as well as billionaire families and individuals that strive to weaken forward movement on multiple topics. This encompasses reproductive choice, queer and transgender freedoms, diverse family models, and honest sex ed.

They achieve this through advocating to officials, financing legal challenges, sabotaging multilateral work to foster equity, propagating misinformation, and bankrolling sympathetic charities.

We look at five episodes that impacted the security, respect, and well-being of the female population.

USAID Effectively Dismantled

In the month of March, a month and a half following a major US aid agency is its funds are blocked, causing widespread distress, a top American diplomat announces that a vast majority of the body's projects will be terminated. American foreign service officers, former presidents and relief and public health authorities criticize the move, stating that lives will be lost. Activists say that the demise of the agency is not just a financial shortfall, it is a savage attack on human rights and access to contraception and reproductive health services. Numerous groups say women and girls will be disproportionately affected by reduced funding, especially in regions of instability. As the year ends, data shows how a significant mortality toll has been exacted from disease, starvation, lack of access to maternal care and gender-based violence, with a far greater catastrophe looming. Another pair of leading funders initiate similar reductions. A head of a worldwide campaign network says a decision to slash billions in overseas assistance is an attempt to placate a powerful partner.

Faith-Based Activists Mobilize at UN Conference

In March, several Christian-right organisations meet in an upmarket New York hotel for a biannual gathering 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 high spirits as they applaud shifts in US policy on LGBTQ issues, inclusion, and reproductive rights. Meanwhile, the UN secretary general opens the global conference with a somber alert that “the toxin of gendered hierarchy” is returning, after a analysis demonstrates that opponents of gender equality are systematically eroding longstanding consensus on fundamental freedoms for women around the world.

African ‘Family Values’ Conferences

Over the summer, a cluster of meetings in Africa centered on the conservative family structures and national independence triggers anxiety among equality campaigners. In the start of May, a national leader and spouse open a large assembly to push back on what they label overseas agendas corrupting societal morals. A soon after, another Pan-African conference on family values is held. Both events are attended by leading Western campaigners against gender ideology, including heads of influential networks. One speaker urges African NGOs to resist “radical global social engineering” of global institutions. In the following month, a major religious institution 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. Campaigners note that the level of external participation has expanded considerably.

Contraceptive Destruction Order

As clinics in sub-Saharan Africa report they are facing shortages of birth control, including emergency kits for survivors of sexual violence, the US announces in July plans to incinerate a vast stockpile of birth control held in a warehouse in Europe. A global sexual health network 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 politically-motivated move “about exporting a regressive policy worldwide” 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 rejects each bid. The situation remains at a standstill as the regional government refuse to permit the destruction of viable medicines.

Broader Restrictions on Aid

Reinstating the Mexico City Policy, which cuts American funding for groups that offer, promote, or give information about abortion services overseas, is typical of certain US administrations. It came as no surprise when the rule was reinstated in the first month of the year. The administration also rejoined an international anti-abortion agreement. 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. Further specifics about the policy's widened application are anticipated next year. A leader in global maternal health says broadening the policy will have “devastating consequences”. Pro-choice activists fear that fresh American assistance deals being discussed with African nations will become dependent on agreeing to the new, wider policy.