Stefano Gennarini
(ZENIT News – Center for Family and Human Rights / New York, 03.08.2025).- The United Nations is soon to mark the 30th anniversary of the landmark 1995 United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. The Commission on the Status of Women will be a key occasion for Trump to undermine or otherwise disrupt the UN gender agenda.
Negotiations are already underway for a political declaration recommitting countries to the 1995 conference. It is expected to be adopted on the first day of the Commission. The Trump administration, in the customary negotiating style of this U.S. president, is putting all options on the table, including asking UN delegations to delete all mentions of “gender” in the draft declaration. As can be expected, Trump officials are already clashing with hostile European delegations.
Europeans want the declaration to expressly recall gender ideology, include abortion-related language, and leave out any reference to national sovereignty.
The EU delegation has asked for language recognizing “women in all their diversity” and “intersectionality,” both technical terms referring to men who identify as women. The Europeans also want the declaration to contain references to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights, a catchall for all matters related to sexual autonomy, including abortion rights and transgender treatments and surgeries.
The Biden administration aligned with these positions only a few weeks ago. Now U.S. diplomats are being asked by the Trump political appointees to object to these policies.
If Trump is successful in blocking the gender agenda at the UN, there are two possible scenarios at the commission. The first is the failure of the UN commission to reach an agreement altogether. This would weaken the massive UN gender movement and give Trump leverage to launch U.S.-controlled bilateral initiatives for women that exclude gender ideology.
A second scenario involves doctoring the final agreement of the commission so that it defines gender as only referring to the two sexes, avoids any controversial language about sexual and reproductive health, and includes explicit assurances of respect for national sovereignty. This option is more oriented toward UN reform. Europeans, who are deeply committed to gender ideology, may prefer the first option and try to ride out the Trump administration without changing UN policy in any meaningful way.
What is true in either scenario, is that under the Trump administration, the gender agenda faces an existential challenge for the first time since 1995.
If there is a single moment in history to be blamed for the spread of gender ideology throughout the world, the Beijing conference is it. The three-hundred page agreement of the Beijing conference enshrined gender ideology in UN policy for the first time and spawned many of the controversial ideas that the Trump administration is trying to eradicate from the federal government. In fact, it was that agreement that Biden and Obama cited in their executive policies promoting gender ideology.
Over the past thirty years, a global gender lobby emerged from the Beijing conference framework. Spearheaded by UN agencies and supported financially by powerful Western governments, this global lobby has diligently and opportunistically pushed gender ideology everywhere. The bureaucratic mechanisms established to implement the Beijing gender agenda have grown exponentially in power and influence. Gender ministries, gender bureaucracies, gender research grants, gender university chairs, gender foreign aid, gender budgeting, gender mainstreaming, gender analysis, and so on and so forth. The agreement has become a sacred cash cow for the feminist movement. Anyone who questions gender ideology or abortion rights is shouted down as a misogynist. The Trump administration is now challenging this.
If Trump can derail the commission next month, it could deliver the message that any country that promotes gender ideology may be barred from receiving U.S. funding and political support.
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