Cross-movement building in a time of backlash against women’s rights

We are living through an unprecedented time of backlash against women’s rights and backsliding on progress made by feminist movements over the last 20 years. Well-funded anti-rights and anti-gender movements are seeing success from their years of campaigning, funded and promoted by authoritarian, far right, religious fundamentalists and conservative regimes.  

Global anti-rights and anti-gender movements have been emboldened by the second term of Donald Trump who has dismantled many initiatives that promote women’s rights with the reversal of Roe verses Wade in the USA and globally through the cancelling of USAID. Social media platforms are not being properly regulated and there is widespread fake news. Authoritarian regimes in other countries such as Argentina, have seen the election of Donald Trump as their cue to erode human rights protections as well, with gender rights often being targeted because of the threat to patriarchal ideology.  

Anti-rights and anti- gender movements have infiltrated society at different levels; in previously progressive spaces like the UN, through local traditional leaders, media influencers, and through local NGOs. Their messaging often reframes human rights language to promote rigid notions of the family and gender roles and criminalises issues such as abortion and sex work.  This infiltration has led to an erosion of space for progressive women’s rights organisations and movements to do their work. It has fuelled a marked increase in attacks and misinformation online and offline, especially towards the most marginalised women and girls and LBTQI+ communities.  

Our partners in feminist movements tell us regularly how they are struggling to do their work in this increasingly hostile climate. There is an increase in organisations closing their doors or reducing work due to a lack of funding. Online harassment and the use of the law to restrict their registrations and remove legal protections against violence and other forms of gender-based harm is on the rise and targeting marginalised groups and identities. This reality is contributing to worsening wellbeing for activists.  

Our partners are already thinking critically about how they can respond to this worrying reality but to do this, they need support to understand the situation clearly and strategise with others. In response to this need, in November 2025, Womankind created a safe online space for dialogue* and exchange for our partners with expert panellists from across the world to hear how they monitor and mitigate these growing threats and critically, how to push back safely. This webinar complements Womankind’s other work with partners to address these issues via our flexible and core funds, through campaigns and global advocacy.  

*Due to the sensitive nature of the dialogue and to ensure the safety and security of everyone involved, the webinar was not recorded, and the panellist’s names are not provided in this piece.  

Call to action for women’s rights organisations and feminist movements

Monitor:

• Follow the money. Anti-rights movements are well funded. To understand them, feminist movements need to monitor where the money is coming from for this work. By observing how anti-rights actors operate online, feminist movements will be able to gain greater clarity on the links between donors and organisations.  
• Infiltrate: To clearly observe the behaviour of anti-rights actors on and offline, feminist actors should infiltrate their platforms when it is safe to do so without leaving digital footprints.  This may mean joining newsletters, posting on the social media pages, joining WhatsApp Groups.  

Mitigate:

• Reinforce progressive language and create counter narratives. Anti-rights actors  create narratives that seek to erode decades of advocacy in human rights spaces to  ensure language is inclusive of the lived realities of all marginalised groups. ‘Family’ and ‘patriotism’ are narrative concepts that have been co-opted to deny rights. Feminist groups need to monitor the regressive language being used, reinforce and promote inclusive language that promotes the human rights of everyone and develop counter narratives to push back and amplify to new audiences.  
• Expose funders who fund harmful narratives to the media to discredit them publicly online 
• Research and litigate – carry out strategic litigation of cases of anti-rights abuses using international legal frameworks and underpinned by credible research to undermine and discredit anti-rights arguments and narratives 
• Community organising – work with communities to bring them into feminist movements in safe spaces for growth and strategic thinking.  

Stay safe:

Pushing back on anti-rights actors is risky work and comes at a high cost to physical and mental health. Activists should weigh up the risks verses potential gains of any action on and offline and consider developing strategies to sustain health, remain safe and avoid burnout.  

Rebuild and strengthen regional networks and avoid siloed working:    

Within feminist movements there is a wealth of experience. Pushing back on anti-rights actors will require feminists to work collectively and use complementary approaches playing to their strengths in their networks nationally and across borders that work.  

Call to action to donors allied to feminist movements

• Be brave! – Funders committed to gender justice should seize this moment to be brave – this is not the moment to withdraw funds.  
• Step in where others have stepped out – at least 5 countries have withdrawn or reduced their funding to women’s rights work in the last 5 years because of the rise of authoritarian, far right and conservative regimes.  
• Invest in young people and their political awareness – there is energy, innovation and  creativity within young feminist movements who bring a greater understanding and openness of intersectional discrimination.   
• Fund flexibly to so that movements can try new approaches – the landscape is changing rapidly and feminist movements need to be able to act and react differently at different times and try new ideas. 
• Reduce or remove restrictions on funding – anti-rights groups lobby aggressively for their objectives using their extensive resources. If donors fund feminist groups without restrictions on lobbying, they can push back with their own evidence-based advocacy. 

Womankind knows that the stronger and more sustainable feminist movements are, the more able they are to resist the widespread backlash on women’s rights alongside having the resilience to push back and defend hard won rights. This is why strengthening feminist movements and critically providing flexible and core funding to them is that the heart of our strategy to 2030.    

Our flexible and core funding schemes are the  Movement Strengthening Fund / Womankind’s Movement Strengthening Fund Analysis – Womankind Worldwide , HER Voice Fund and Strategic Grants.   

If you feel passionately about investing in stronger feminist movements, please get in touch with Martina Hoggart, Director of Fundraising & Marketing  

MartinaH@womankind.org.uk