Trump spurs global rollback on the rights of women and girls

Telegraph

07-05-2025

A global rollback of women's rights was already underway before US President Donald Trump took office. But now it's in hyper speed. Trump's actions, including his broad slashing of international aid, both cause direct harm and encourage other world leaders to walk away from women's rights.
For years, most mainstream politicians saw advancing the rights of 'women and girls' as a priority, even if the reality did not always match the rhetoric. Doing so often seemed uncontroversial and bipartisan, including in the UK. Foreign Secretary William Hague and Angelina Jolie in 2014 opened an initiative on sexual violence in armed conflict.
The same year, the UK's coalition government held a 'Girl Summit' promising global leadership to end child marriage and female genital mutilation. In 2021, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that girls' education globally was a top priority. And just last month, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced the appointment of Harriet Harman as UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls. Her job: to champion gender equality worldwide.
The 2023 US Agency for International Development (USAID) Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment Policy was also unequivocal: 'Gender equality is a human right.' This statement reflects international law – 189 countries, the vast majority of the world, have agreed to be bound by the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
The #MeToo movement went viral in 2017. Women around the world shared experiences of gender-based violence and demanded solutions. No one was naïve about the challenge of dismantling centuries of patriarchy, but there was a feeling that women's legitimate demands could not be denied.
Yet today we are struggling to slow the loss of rights protections. Trump's attack on women's rights within the US has already gravely damaged respect for reproductive rights and is having a much broader impact on the health and economic rights of women and girls inside the United States. Abortion is now illegal in 12 of the 50 US states, according to the Centre for Reproductive Rights.
But his policies' harmful impact stretches far beyond the US. First, there are the aid cuts themselves. The Trump administration has drastically slashed US government funding for international aid, including to programs focused specifically on assisting women. The US had been the world's largest aid donor. Women and girls are dying as a result and many more will die unless these policies are reversed.
The Trump administration has also cut crucial research on women's health. They have dismantled parts of the US government that were responsible for developing aid programming, including teams to end gender inequality. The administration has cut over US$500 million in Labor Department grants to uphold international labour standards in 40 countries, including programs to support gender equity and women's participation in the workforce, and to combat human trafficking – which disproportionately impacts women and girls.
Women and girls will suffer
The Trump administration's broader assault on what it refers to as DEI – efforts to redress inequities based on historical and current forms of racism and other forms of discrimination – is having a deeply chilling impact. Even the word gender seems to be an anathema to the US government, with, for example, the US mission to the UN seeking to remove this word from every UN resolution.
Decades of hard work went into helping the aid sector be more cognisant of and responsive to how inequalities intersect. For example, if a population is facing a famine, donor governments and aid groups need specific strategies to get food to women and girls who, among other obstacles, face greater difficulties in accessing distribution centres.
During conflicts, women and girls face gendered impacts that often include sexual violence, but also affect their livelihoods, access to education, safety, freedom of movement, and care-giving roles. Forced displacement often exposes them to further violence. These gendered impacts are further complicated when they intersect with other forms of marginalisation, including based on race, ethnicity, age, and disability.
The disproportionate impacts that women and girls face exist across the entire range of human rights issues. Trump's crackdown on 'DEI language' makes it harder even to discuss these issues.
During the first Trump administration, some countries, led by the Netherlands, filled gaps in international aid created by the already deeply harmful but far less drastic cuts. This time around, we see the opposite. Even among countries pledging to maintain their aid budgets there is no talk of increases, and often the news is much worse.
Under US pressure to boost military spending and concerned that their security pact with the US is breaking down, European countries that have seen themselves as leaders on women's rights are sharpening their axes. The UK Labour government cut the already reduced aid budget again, a total reduction since 2021 of more than half, alongside a wave of cuts by other European countries. The Netherlands government is among those cutting.
Make no mistake – women and girls suffer as a result. The World Health Organization – one of the UN bodies the US is withdrawing from – warns that the cuts have made the goals on reducing maternal mortality almost unachievable. Funding cuts are closing down some of the few facilities providing emergency medical care to survivors of rape in war zones. Programs around the world that provided life-saving assistance are closing their doors.
Trump is leading the way to a cruel new world order in which women and girls are among the first victims. Governments everywhere have a duty to push back.
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