Backlash Against the Backlash

On the same day that United States (U.S.) President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would no longer fund United Nations (UN) Women and several other UN entities, Foreign Affairs published an article by Saskia Brechenmacher, titled “How to Save the Fight for Women’s Rights: The Backlash Against Democracy Calls for New Strategies.”

Brechenmacher, who is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, started her article by discussing the “backlash” against feminist movements in 2025, citing a press release from the UN along the way. Brechenmacher then presented a “new template for action” to counter this backlash. Brechenmacher’s template consisted of the following recommendations for feminist groups":

1. Use “multilateral forums.” (By this, Brechenmacher presumably means the UN and ideologically similar international organizations.)

2. Focus on local level collaborations rather than efforts that are “solely technical and elite-driven.” (That Brechenmacher mentioned the “elitist” nature of previous “gender equality” efforts is an interesting admission.)

3. Invest in initiatives that include men and boys.

4. Connect messaging about women’s empowerment to family well-being, community resilience, and economic stability.

5. Strengthen democratic institutions.

6. Engage with “coalitions of the willing,” which Brechenmacher defines as “smaller circles of governments, civil society groups, and private sector actors that collaborate to tackle specific hurdles to gender equality.” Brechenmacher then lists specific issues that she believes these smaller coalitions should focus on. The examples included: “expanding access to reproductive health care, improving childcare and eldercare systems, tackling young men’s online radicalization, and ensuring artificial intelligence tools are designed and deployed with attention to their different effects on women and men.” Here, Brechenmacher also highlighted the Global Partnership for Action on Gender-Based Online Harassment and Abuse, which started under the Biden White House in 2022 as a coalition of governments, international organizations, and private companies whose aim was to combat technology-facilitated gender-based violence.

Though not stated explicitly, a likely key player in Brechenmacher’s new template for action is UN Women. UN Women was one of the informers of the Global Partnership for Action on Gender-Based Online Harassment and Abuse, and at the end of 2025, UN Women, and the UN more broadly, went on a biased, weeks-long “digital violence” campaign, which refused to acknowledge that boys and men face just as much online abuse and harassment as girls and women.

Brechenmacher and UN Women also share broadly similar views on the “backlash against gender equality.” In 2025, UN Women regularly commented on X about this “backlash,” and toward the end of the year, the UN co-sponsored a meeting of the International Gender Champions (IGC) network. The aim of the meeting was to have a “critical conversation on advancing equality amid a rising tide of organized opposition.” The meeting centred around a report that was published by UN Women and the UN Research Institute for Social Development titled, “Understanding Backlash Against Gender Equality: Evidence, Trends and Policy Responses.” Similar, to Brechenmacher’s article, the report says what the feminist playbook is going to look like in 2026.

Before revealing that playbook, UN Women’s report first defined what the backlash is. According to UN Women, the backlash is “deliberate, organized attempts to roll back established commitments, rights and achievements in gender equality, women’s rights and women’s empowerment as defined in a given local, national, regional or global context.”

UN Women then identified the people behind the backlash as “networks of old and new conservative actors and men’s rights activists,” who are “rallying around the fight against “gender ideology”” and who are funded by faith-based organizatio