The rise of right-wing governments, endless wars and deepening economic crises have made women's lives more precarious around the world in 2025; However, this picture was not enough to stop women's resistance against the usurpation of their rights.
ANF
NEWS CENTER
Sunday, December 28, 2025
The year 2025 was not a global progress for women, but on the contrary, a year in which their rights were scythed and women defended against it. The rise to power of right-wing and authoritarian governments around the world, ongoing wars and deepening economic crises have directly targeted women's rights to both legal and daily life. The global assessment report published by the United Nations Entity for Women (UN Women) at the beginning of 2025 reveals that there is a decline in women's rights in one out of every four countries, emphasizing that this decline is especially linked to right-wing populist administrations, conflict zones and austerity policies.
INSTITUTIONAL ELIMINATION OF WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN THE AMERICAS
The right-wing wave stretching from Latin America to North America created a new political climate that coded women's rights as "ideological deviation". The steps taken after the Javier Milei government took office in Argentina were one of the most striking examples of this transformation. According to reports from international trade unions and women's organizations, with the closure of the "Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity" in Argentina throughout 2025, budgets for programs to combat violence against women have been cut, social policies supporting care work have been suspended, and the right to abortion has been effectively turned into a service that is difficult to access. UNI Global Union defines this process as "the institutional dismantling of women's rights".
A similar ideological line also manifested itself in the USA; While restrictions on the right to abortion have deepened, especially in conservative states, gender equality policies have been targeted with the discourse of "family values". A 2025 analysis published by the Carnegie Endowment calls this global trend the "institutionalization of the anti-gender movement" and points out that women's rights are directly turning into a political front.
HEAVY PICTURE OF THE WAR IN UKRAINE
However, the oppression faced by women in 2025 was not limited to the results of the ballot box. Wars and conflicts have meant multi-layered destruction for women. The war in Ukraine, now in its third year, has dramatically worsened women's living conditions. According to the 2025 report published by the UN Office for Ukraine, 6.7 million women and girls in the country are in need of humanitarian aid; Gender-based violence increased by more than 30 percent compared to the pre-war period. The same report reveals that women's participation in the workforce has decreased, while the burden of care is concentrated on women's shoulders. While war excludes women from economic life, it also pushes them into precarious and invisible labor areas.
WAR IN PALESTINE IS REPRODUCED THROUGH WOMEN'S BODIES AND LIVES
In Palestine, the picture is even more severe. Under the ongoing attacks and blockade conditions in Gaza, women are deprived of the most basic rights, from the right to life to health care. A field report published in 2025 by the Sweden-based Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation documents that pregnant women and those who have just given birth are at risk due to the collapse of the health system, and that displacement leaves women with sexual violence and poverty. According to the report, Palestinian women are not only experiencing the side effects of war; The war itself is reproduced through women's bodies and lives. Despite this, it is pointed out that women's voices are systematically excluded during the peace and ceasefire processes.
IF IT GOES ON LIKE THIS, MORE THAN 350 MILLION WOMEN WILL BE EXTREMELY IMPOVERISHED IN 2030
Economic crises intertwined with wars mean permanent impoverishment for women. The 2025 Global Gender Equality report by UN Women and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) predicts that more than 350 million women will continue to live in extreme poverty conditions by 2030 if the current trajectory continues. The report emphasizes that the weakening of social state mechanisms, especially in times of war and crisis, focuses unpaid care work on women and pushes women into informal and precarious jobs. The OECD's economic analysis of Ukraine and conflict zones similarly reveals that the impact of austerity policies on women is much more devastating than on men.
VIOLATIONS AGAINST WOMEN CONTINUE IN SYRIA
In the global panorama of 2025, the rights violations experienced by women in many countries of the Middle East and Africa emerged as the most intense and tragic reflection of inequality trends around the world. The effects of more than a decade of war in Syria are not limited to physical destruction; The data of human rights organizations concretely reveal the dimensions of violence and discrimination that women are exposed to. The latest report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights documents the murder of at least 29,358 women and girls from March 2011 to November 2025; It is also stated that tens of thousands of women are still in custody, missing or forcibly disappeared. These data show that the cost of war on women has reached the level of a direct violation of the right to life, not just economic or social.
After Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) expanded its de facto power in Syria by the end of 2024, serious findings emerged that violations against Alawite women in particular increased. Amnesty International's report, published in mid-2025, documents numerous cases of abductions, forcible detention, and threats of Alawite women and girls around Latakia, Tartus, Hama, and Homs, revealing that these abuses are part of a climate of sectarian and gender-based oppression rather than isolated crimes. According to the report, women's participation in daily life is severely restricted, and families have come to avoid sending their girls to school or women being in public alone; The ineffectiveness of the security forces and impunity deepen this climate of fear. The fact that the female body and freedom of movement have become a tool of sectarian control shows that under HTS rule, women are not only the target of war but also of ideological and sectarian domination.
VIOLATIONS CONTINUE IN IRAN, SO-CALLED FRAMEWORKS ARE NOT APPLIED IN IRAQ
Iran, on the other hand, stands out as one of the countries with the harshest rights violations in the world in 2025. According to Amnesty International, women's rights defenders in Iran have been threatened with arbitrary arrests, corporal punishment and even the death penalty throughout 2025. When women raised their voices against compulsory veiling laws and discriminatory practices, the state's repressive apparatus used unlawful detentions and violence to suppress these protests. This reveals that the oppression of women's bodies and rights has become systematic, not only individual, but also state policy.
The picture in Iraq may be less severe, but it contains a similar situation in terms of structure. According to United Nations statements, although the Iraqi government has announced strategies to increase women's political and economic participation, these so-called frameworks fail to hide in practice the fact that many women still lack equal opportunities in security, work and public life. Although national strategies in Iraq seem to be aimed at providing women with guarantees of political representation, in practice, social norms and security concerns continue to create inequality in women's daily lives.
WOMEN IN AFRICA ARE IN THE GRIP OF WAR AND CONFLICT
In many regions of the African continent, women's hardships have been intertwined with both conflict and economic collapse. In the ongoing civil war in Sudan, UN Women and other international reports highlight that sexual violence against women and girls has become systematic; As a result of attacks by paramilitary groups and armed elements, women are not only subjected to violence and rape, but also risk their lives when they are separated from their families, trying to protect their children or trying to access basic health services. According to UN agencies, millions of women and girls in Sudan have faced acute food insecurity, and harsh conflict has made it impossible to access vital services, especially for pregnant women.
In Ethiopia and other parts of the Horn of Africa, the vacuum created by war and political conflicts has led to an increase in sexual violence against women, which is a war crime. One of the remarkable examples; According to The Guardian, cases of mass rape, forced pregnancy and sexual slavery reported as part of the Tigray war; These attacks stand as proof that both physical and psychological trauma can last for generations.
In Africa in general, a manifestation of systematic discrimination is emerging, not only in conflict zones, but combined with social norms and economic crises. Amnesty International's regional reports show that gender-based violence, economic inequality and barriers to access to education and health care are common in everyday life; it documents that this weakens women's economic independence.
WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN THE EU ARE LIMITED TO RHETORIC
In 2025, the European Union faced serious structural and societal obstacles while trying to develop policies that promise progress in the field of gender equality; While the European Commission adopted its "Roadmap on Women's Rights" in March 2025 and highlighted eight basic principles aimed at women's economic freedom, equal representation and protection against violence, these efforts were criticized as an insufficient commitment to stop the existing decline in rights.
Although the roadmap promises steps in areas such as combating violence, equal employment, access to health care and political participation, current reports reveal that physical and sexual violence against women is still widespread in Europe and that the vast majority of victims do not report it to the police. For example, it is stated that approximately 50 million women in the EU have experienced this type of violence and this rate has remained almost unchanged in ten years. This shows that years of women's rights policies continue to be limited to rhetoric rather than concrete results.
While some EU member states have shown tendencies to weaken gender-sensitive legal frameworks, such as the Latvia Parliament's decision to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention in the fall of 2025, symbolizing a tendency to step back on international standards in combating violence against women, a step met with widespread protests. Meanwhile, a joint report by UN Women and UNESCO shows that digital violence and online harassment are targeting women human rights defenders in Europe; This new generation of oppression threatens to remove many women from public and civil spheres and directly undermines women's freedom of expression. While Europe's relatively strong institutional frameworks have made significant gains in gender equality over 60 years, reports suggest that in the reality of 2025, these gains are rapidly becoming fragile, deepening inequalities in the daily lives of many women. This shows that the EU has to transform its policy discourse into concrete practices.
WOMEN RESIST DESPITE ALL THE PRESSURES
Despite all these usurpations of rights, wars and a wave of authoritarianism, 2025 was a year in which women around the world were on the stage not only with victimization but also with persistent resistance and political subjectivation. The 2025 assessments of UN Women and CIVICUS reveal that even in countries where oppressive regimes are gaining power, women carry out a multi-layered struggle from unions to local councils, from street protests to digital campaigns. The ongoing civil disobedience against the compulsory veil in Iran, feminist strikes against the austerity and misogynistic policies of the Milei government in Argentina, Palestinian women's establishment of survival networks under both war and occupation, women's persistent demands for participation in peace processes in Africa, and mass mobilizations led by women against the far right in Europe stood out as parts of this resistance. International Labour Organization (ILO) data shows that there has been a global increase in the number of unionized women workers in 2025; It shows that women have become more visible in strike and collective bargaining processes, especially in the fields of care work, health and education. Feminist movements not only defended their rights against the backward steps of states and international institutions, but also produced a counter-politics that questioned the economic and political order itself, saying that "women will not pay the price of crises". This picture shows that 2025 is not only a year of losses for women, but also a year of collective political will that sprouts again as it is tried to be suppressed.
The clearest truth left by 2025 is this: Right-wing policies, war and economic crises are not by chance, but by feeding each other, narrowing women's living spaces. For this reason, the struggle for women's rights is not only a "women's issue"; continues to be at the center of the struggle for democracy, peace and social justice.
NEWS CENTER
Sunday, December 28, 2025
The year 2025 was not a global progress for women, but on the contrary, a year in which their rights were scythed and women defended against it. The rise to power of right-wing and authoritarian governments around the world, ongoing wars and deepening economic crises have directly targeted women's rights to both legal and daily life. The global assessment report published by the United Nations Entity for Women (UN Women) at the beginning of 2025 reveals that there is a decline in women's rights in one out of every four countries, emphasizing that this decline is especially linked to right-wing populist administrations, conflict zones and austerity policies.
INSTITUTIONAL ELIMINATION OF WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN THE AMERICAS
The right-wing wave stretching from Latin America to North America created a new political climate that coded women's rights as "ideological deviation". The steps taken after the Javier Milei government took office in Argentina were one of the most striking examples of this transformation. According to reports from international trade unions and women's organizations, with the closure of the "Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity" in Argentina throughout 2025, budgets for programs to combat violence against women have been cut, social policies supporting care work have been suspended, and the right to abortion has been effectively turned into a service that is difficult to access. UNI Global Union defines this process as "the institutional dismantling of women's rights".
A similar ideological line also manifested itself in the USA; While restrictions on the right to abortion have deepened, especially in conservative states, gender equality policies have been targeted with the discourse of "family values". A 2025 analysis published by the Carnegie Endowment calls this global trend the "institutionalization of the anti-gender movement" and points out that women's rights are directly turning into a political front.
HEAVY PICTURE OF THE WAR IN UKRAINE
However, the oppression faced by women in 2025 was not limited to the results of the ballot box. Wars and conflicts have meant multi-layered destruction for women. The war in Ukraine, now in its third year, has dramatically worsened women's living conditions. According to the 2025 report published by the UN Office for Ukraine, 6.7 million women and girls in the country are in need of humanitarian aid; Gender-based violence increased by more than 30 percent compared to the pre-war period. The same report reveals that women's participation in the workforce has decreased, while the burden of care is concentrated on women's shoulders. While war excludes women from economic life, it also pushes them into precarious and invisible labor areas.
WAR IN PALESTINE IS REPRODUCED THROUGH WOMEN'S BODIES AND LIVES
In Palestine, the picture is even more severe. Under the ongoing attacks and blockade conditions in Gaza, women are deprived of the most basic rights, from the right to life to health care. A field report published in 2025 by the Sweden-based Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation documents that pregnant women and those who have just given birth are at risk due to the collapse of the health system, and that displacement leaves women with sexual violence and poverty. According to the report, Palestinian women are not only experiencing the side effects of war; The war itself is reproduced through women's bodies and lives. Despite this, it is pointed out that women's voices are systematically excluded during the peace and ceasefire processes.
IF IT GOES ON LIKE THIS, MORE THAN 350 MILLION WOMEN WILL BE EXTREMELY IMPOVERISHED IN 2030
Economic crises intertwined with wars mean permanent impoverishment for women. The 2025 Global Gender Equality report by UN Women and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) predicts that more than 350 million women will continue to live in extreme poverty conditions by 2030 if the current trajectory continues. The report emphasizes that the weakening of social state mechanisms, especially in times of war and crisis, focuses unpaid care work on women and pushes women into informal and precarious jobs. The OECD's economic analysis of Ukraine and conflict zones similarly reveals that the impact of austerity policies on women is much more devastating than on men.
VIOLATIONS AGAINST WOMEN CONTINUE IN SYRIA
In the global panorama of 2025, the rights violations experienced by women in many countries of the Middle East and Africa emerged as the most intense and tragic reflection of inequality trends around the world. The effects of more than a decade of war in Syria are not limited to physical destruction; The data of human rights organizations concretely reveal the dimensions of violence and discrimination that women are exposed to. The latest report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights documents the murder of at least 29,358 women and girls from March 2011 to November 2025; It is also stated that tens of thousands of women are still in custody, missing or forcibly disappeared. These data show that the cost of war on women has reached the level of a direct violation of the right to life, not just economic or social.
After Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) expanded its de facto power in Syria by the end of 2024, serious findings emerged that violations against Alawite women in particular increased. Amnesty International's report, published in mid-2025, documents numerous cases of abductions, forcible detention, and threats of Alawite women and girls around Latakia, Tartus, Hama, and Homs, revealing that these abuses are part of a climate of sectarian and gender-based oppression rather than isolated crimes. According to the report, women's participation in daily life is severely restricted, and families have come to avoid sending their girls to school or women being in public alone; The ineffectiveness of the security forces and impunity deepen this climate of fear. The fact that the female body and freedom of movement have become a tool of sectarian control shows that under HTS rule, women are not only the target of war but also of ideological and sectarian domination.
VIOLATIONS CONTINUE IN IRAN, SO-CALLED FRAMEWORKS ARE NOT APPLIED IN IRAQ
Iran, on the other hand, stands out as one of the countries with the harshest rights violations in the world in 2025. According to Amnesty International, women's rights defenders in Iran have been threatened with arbitrary arrests, corporal punishment and even the death penalty throughout 2025. When women raised their voices against compulsory veiling laws and discriminatory practices, the state's repressive apparatus used unlawful detentions and violence to suppress these protests. This reveals that the oppression of women's bodies and rights has become systematic, not only individual, but also state policy.
The picture in Iraq may be less severe, but it contains a similar situation in terms of structure. According to United Nations statements, although the Iraqi government has announced strategies to increase women's political and economic participation, these so-called frameworks fail to hide in practice the fact that many women still lack equal opportunities in security, work and public life. Although national strategies in Iraq seem to be aimed at providing women with guarantees of political representation, in practice, social norms and security concerns continue to create inequality in women's daily lives.
WOMEN IN AFRICA ARE IN THE GRIP OF WAR AND CONFLICT
In many regions of the African continent, women's hardships have been intertwined with both conflict and economic collapse. In the ongoing civil war in Sudan, UN Women and other international reports highlight that sexual violence against women and girls has become systematic; As a result of attacks by paramilitary groups and armed elements, women are not only subjected to violence and rape, but also risk their lives when they are separated from their families, trying to protect their children or trying to access basic health services. According to UN agencies, millions of women and girls in Sudan have faced acute food insecurity, and harsh conflict has made it impossible to access vital services, especially for pregnant women.
In Ethiopia and other parts of the Horn of Africa, the vacuum created by war and political conflicts has led to an increase in sexual violence against women, which is a war crime. One of the remarkable examples; According to The Guardian, cases of mass rape, forced pregnancy and sexual slavery reported as part of the Tigray war; These attacks stand as proof that both physical and psychological trauma can last for generations.
In Africa in general, a manifestation of systematic discrimination is emerging, not only in conflict zones, but combined with social norms and economic crises. Amnesty International's regional reports show that gender-based violence, economic inequality and barriers to access to education and health care are common in everyday life; it documents that this weakens women's economic independence.
WOMEN'S RIGHTS IN THE EU ARE LIMITED TO RHETORIC
In 2025, the European Union faced serious structural and societal obstacles while trying to develop policies that promise progress in the field of gender equality; While the European Commission adopted its "Roadmap on Women's Rights" in March 2025 and highlighted eight basic principles aimed at women's economic freedom, equal representation and protection against violence, these efforts were criticized as an insufficient commitment to stop the existing decline in rights.
Although the roadmap promises steps in areas such as combating violence, equal employment, access to health care and political participation, current reports reveal that physical and sexual violence against women is still widespread in Europe and that the vast majority of victims do not report it to the police. For example, it is stated that approximately 50 million women in the EU have experienced this type of violence and this rate has remained almost unchanged in ten years. This shows that years of women's rights policies continue to be limited to rhetoric rather than concrete results.
While some EU member states have shown tendencies to weaken gender-sensitive legal frameworks, such as the Latvia Parliament's decision to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention in the fall of 2025, symbolizing a tendency to step back on international standards in combating violence against women, a step met with widespread protests. Meanwhile, a joint report by UN Women and UNESCO shows that digital violence and online harassment are targeting women human rights defenders in Europe; This new generation of oppression threatens to remove many women from public and civil spheres and directly undermines women's freedom of expression. While Europe's relatively strong institutional frameworks have made significant gains in gender equality over 60 years, reports suggest that in the reality of 2025, these gains are rapidly becoming fragile, deepening inequalities in the daily lives of many women. This shows that the EU has to transform its policy discourse into concrete practices.
WOMEN RESIST DESPITE ALL THE PRESSURES
Despite all these usurpations of rights, wars and a wave of authoritarianism, 2025 was a year in which women around the world were on the stage not only with victimization but also with persistent resistance and political subjectivation. The 2025 assessments of UN Women and CIVICUS reveal that even in countries where oppressive regimes are gaining power, women carry out a multi-layered struggle from unions to local councils, from street protests to digital campaigns. The ongoing civil disobedience against the compulsory veil in Iran, feminist strikes against the austerity and misogynistic policies of the Milei government in Argentina, Palestinian women's establishment of survival networks under both war and occupation, women's persistent demands for participation in peace processes in Africa, and mass mobilizations led by women against the far right in Europe stood out as parts of this resistance. International Labour Organization (ILO) data shows that there has been a global increase in the number of unionized women workers in 2025; It shows that women have become more visible in strike and collective bargaining processes, especially in the fields of care work, health and education. Feminist movements not only defended their rights against the backward steps of states and international institutions, but also produced a counter-politics that questioned the economic and political order itself, saying that "women will not pay the price of crises". This picture shows that 2025 is not only a year of losses for women, but also a year of collective political will that sprouts again as it is tried to be suppressed.
The clearest truth left by 2025 is this: Right-wing policies, war and economic crises are not by chance, but by feeding each other, narrowing women's living spaces. For this reason, the struggle for women's rights is not only a "women's issue"; continues to be at the center of the struggle for democracy, peace and social justice.
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