Category: Dossier

The term polycrisis has quickly entered both policy and academic discourse as a way of describing the entanglement of overlapping global emergencies. First invoked in a European context by Jean-Claude Juncker in 2016 to capture the simultaneous migration, economic, and security challenges facing the Union.[i] Historian Adam Tooze later popularised the concept to characterise the mutually reinforcing crises of the early 2020s – from climate change and pandemics to war and financial instability.[ii] Unlike the language of “multiple crises” or the journalistic shorthand of permacrisis, which implies an endless succession of shocks, the notion of a polycrisis highlights interdependence. Crises feed into each other, producing cascading and often unpredictable impacts that cannot be addressed in isolation.

To speak of the present global condition as a polycrisis is therefore to acknowledge its structural, systemic nature. Single-issue solutions are bound to fail if they ignore the domino effects embedded in these dynamics. Climate disasters disrupt food systems, triggering migration and political instability. Economic shocks intensify polarisation, fuelling anti-rights movements. War and militarisation erode civic space and entrench authoritarianism, further marginalising those already most exposed to climate and economic shocks.

Gender lies at the centre of these interlocking crises. The rollbacks we see – whether in gender equality, LGBTQ+ protections, disability rights, or racial justice – are not isolated policy reversals but part of a wider polycrisis pattern. They are both symptoms and accelerants. Crises provide fertile ground for scapegoating and anti-gender movements, while rights regressions weaken societies’ resilience to future shocks. Far from being secondary to the “core” crises of climate, economics, or security, gender is a litmus test of how societies manage – or fail to manage – systemic stress and structural violence.

Yet governance, both domestic and multilateral, remains ill-equipped to respond. In many Western democracies, political choices prioritise dismantling past gains and shoring up the interests of the wealthiest or the arms and fossil fuel industries. Donor states in the Global North are dismantling the very protections they once promoted, while multilateral organisations bend under political and financial pressure. Understanding the gendered dimensions of the polycrisis, and how they intersect with agenda-setting and funding at the global level, is therefore essential to developing crisis-proof approaches to rights protection. The polycrisis is not only deepening gendered vulnerabilities but also accelerating a retreat of multilateralism on gender and intersectional rights – driven by political choices in donor states.

Global North drivers of the gendered polycrisis

Countries long regarded as champions of gender equality have begun dismantling the very protections they once promoted. These reversals matter not only because of their domestic impact, but because it remains that these same countries hold strong agency in setting the global agenda for multilateral institutions and development cooperation. When governments in the Global North roll back rights domestically, the consequences reverberate far beyond their borders, shaping the international response to the polycrisis while simultaneously undermining it.

In the United Kingdom, anti-gender politics crystallised in 2025 through a series of judicial and policy shifts that severely undermined trans and gender-diverse rights. On April 16, the Supreme Court ruled in For Women Scotland Ltd v. The Scottish Ministers that terms such as “man,” “woman,” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 must be interpreted exclusively as biological sex—even for individuals holding Gender Recognition Certificates.[iii] Human Rights Watch condemned the decision as a regressive blow to trans rights, noting that it effectively barred many transgender people from access to single-sex spaces consistent with their identity.[iv] The fallout was immediate: public bodies were instructed to revise policies on access to gendered spaces and services, reinforcing exclusion in shelters, sports facilities, and healthcare settings. The Equality and Human Rights Commission followed with interim guidance requiring public bodies to treat trans women as “biological men” across schools, workplaces, hospitals, and services.[v] At the same time, access to healthcare was curtailed: in March 2024, the National Health Service enacted a permanent ban on prescribing puberty blockers to adolescents, following the Cass Review.[vi] Critics argue these measures amount to institutionalised hostility toward gender-diverse communities, rolling back decades of progress.

These actions illustrate how quickly rights can be dismantled, even in democracies with strong human rights traditions. By promoting biologically essentialist understandings of gender, the UK ruling fuels both institutional exclusion and the polarizing framing of gender identity as a political fault line – rather than a matter of rights or wellbeing. Barriers to gender‑affirming care, systemic exclusion in healthcare, and the emotional toll of policy‑driven discrimination are already manifesting in sharply poorer health outcomes within this community.[vii]

In the United States, the rollback has been even more sweeping. In 2025, the Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” blocked Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood for one year, threatening nearly 200 clinics and over a million low-income patients.[viii] Title X funding was simultaneously frozen, stripping $65.8 million from reproductive health providers and leaving seven states without coverage.[ix] Authorities also destroyed $9.7 million worth of contraceptives bound for five African countries, projected to cause 174,000 unintended pregnancies and 56,000 unsafe abortions.[x]

Alongside reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ protections were aggressively targeted. Between May and August 2025, the administration reinstated bans on transgender military service, cut $800 million in federal research funding for any grants referencing LGBTQ+ issues – even when the studies addressed broader public health concerns – censored national data collection on sexual orientation and gender identity, and imposed new restrictions on gender-affirming care at both state and federal levels.[xi] Schools expanded “Don’t Say Gay” laws[xii], banning classroom discussion of gender identity, while libraries faced defunding threats for hosting LGBTQ+ inclusive materials.[xiii] These measures reinforced a climate of erasure and silencing, portraying gender identity and sexual expression not as rights but as political liabilities.

These actions show how crises of governance, economic strain, and political polarisation create fertile ground for anti-gender movements. In the U.S., the rollback of reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights is not an isolated culture war, but part of a broader polycrisis dynamic where social divisions are exploited to distract from failures in climate action, economic resilience, and democratic stability. Scholars have documented how reproductive restrictions cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars annually – $68 billion in lost earnings in just 16 states post‑Roe, and $173 billion per year in broader national costs – demonstrating that these measures inflict real macroeconomic harm while serving as ideological distractions.[xiv] At the same time, the Trump administration has purged DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) content across federal agencies - including erasing terms like “gender” and “women in leadership” from NASA and the FDA - and systematically dismantled gender-affirming care and LGBTQ+ legal protections through executive orders and state legislation.[xv] These politically charged erasures of identity and rights occur in an environment where climate regulation is being rolled back[xvi], environmental science defunded[xvii], and social safety nets eroded[xviii] - making gender backlash both a product of and fuel for the polycrisis.

Europe, often depicted as a bastion of social protections, is not immune. Femicide remains endemic: the European Institute for Gender Equality estimates that at least 4,000 women are killed every year by intimate partners or family members, though the real figure is almost certainly higher due to underreporting.[xix] Eurostat data shows that across Europe, women are killed by family members or intimate partners at roughly twice the rate of men, with the disparity widening further when focusing solely on intimate partners.[xx]

New forms of gendered abuse are proliferating in digital spaces, themselves a frontier of the polycrisis where technological disruption and disinformation collide with gendered harm. Europol’s 2024 Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment documented sharp rises in sextortion and non-consensual image sharing, disproportionately targeting minors.[xxi] The Council of Europe has warned of the rapid spread of deepfake pornography and online harassment, with young women and public figures particularly vulnerable.[xxii]

These material rollbacks are reinforced by cultural backlash. The European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (2023) highlighted the rapid growth of misogynistic online communities linked to radical right-wing movements.[xxiii] The Centre for Countering Digital Hate showed how TikTok and YouTube algorithms push incel and misogynistic content to teenage boys within hours of account creation, normalising harassment and feeding into offline violence.[xxiv]

Together, these trends reveal how Europe’s own polycrisis – marked by economic uncertainty, rising extremism, and technological disruption – has fuelled regressive gender politics. Research shows that in times of financial strain and austerity, feminist issues often become marginalized in policy-making. For example, scholars analysing past economic crises in Europe document how gender concerns were sidelined under a focus on macroeconomic stabilization, reinforcing structural invisibility of women’s needs.[xxv] By weakening protections and relegating gender equality to the margins, Europe isn’t insulating itself from broader crises - it is undermining its own stability. The erosion of gender justice becomes both a symptom of compounded stresses and an accelerant of political fragility and social disintegration, undermining resilience and credibility across the region.

From domestic rollback to global retreat

These examples show how gender lies at the centre of today’s polycrisis. Economic shocks, political polarisation, and technological disruption converge to both erode gender-related rights and intensify wider instability. Crucially, the Global North is not standing apart from this dynamic – it is driving it. Because these same states hold disproportionate sway over multilateral institutions and aid flows, their domestic rollbacks do not remain domestic. They cascade outward, shaping humanitarian and development priorities, shrinking civic space, and redrawing the boundaries of what is politically or financially possible on the global stage. The consequences are clear in the retreat of aid: political choices in the North are directly deepening vulnerabilities in the South, exacerbating the very crises they claim to address.

In July 2025, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office confirmed that bilateral aid for Africa, the Middle East, gender, education, and health programmes would be reduced in 2025/26, with the overall official development assistance (ODA) budget set to fall by 6 percent.[xxvi] Health spending is expected to decline by nearly half compared to the previous year, including cuts to women’s health and emergency response programmes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia. A flagship girls’ education initiative in the DRC is set to close early, cutting off access for 170,000 children in post-conflict Kasai.[xxvii] Even the government’s own equality impact assessment warned these reductions would increase disease burdens, premature deaths, and adverse impacts on women, children, and people with disabilities.

The UK’s retrenchment is not an isolated case but part of a systemic rollback across major donors. The OECD projects that 2025 will be the first time in nearly three decades that the four largest aid providers – France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States – have simultaneously cut official development assistance for two consecutive years. Net ODA is expected to fall by 9–17 percent, a loss of up to USD 56 billion compared to 2023 levels.[xxviii] Least developed countries are projected to lose as much as a quarter of their bilateral aid in a single year, with sub-Saharan Africa facing declines of 16–28 percent. Health funding, already volatile since the COVID-19 response peaked, could fall by up to a third, returning to mid-2000s levels. Cuts to multilateral contributions magnify the crisis: the eleven donors announcing reductions account for more than 60 percent of WHO financing and 87 percent of World Food Programme funding.

Civil society organisations underscore how these financial contractions directly dismantle frontline protection systems. ILGA World and its six regional federations have warned that governments are making “the conscious choice” to defund work supporting women, LGBTQ+ people, and marginalised groups, resulting in the closure of health centres, safe spaces, and community programmes.[xxix] UN Women’s global survey of 411 women’s rights organisations across 44 crisis-affected countries found that 90 percent have already been impacted by cuts, with more than half warning they may have to shut down within six months if new resources are not secured.[xxx] The majority of reductions have fallen on gender-based violence services, reproductive health, and livelihoods support - precisely at a time when more than 500 women and girls die each day in humanitarian contexts from preventable pregnancy and childbirth complications.

Recent funding data also highlights the systemic fragility of the aid ecosystem itself. As The New Humanitarian reports, humanitarian finance peaked in 2022, but stagnated among most OECD donors the following year, with surging U.S. funding masking the broader decline.[xxxi] When the Trump administration dismantled USAID in the first months of 2025, the sector lost its largest stabiliser almost overnight, leaving mid-sized and smaller donors unable to compensate. The result is a fragmented system in which funding is skewed toward politically visible crises such as Ukraine and Palestine, while longer-term development and peacebuilding work in fragile settings is deprioritised. Despite decades of rhetoric around the “humanitarian–development–peace nexus,” current trends instead reveal a vicious cycle: as donors retreat to short-term humanitarian assistance while cutting development and rights funding, crises deepen, demand for humanitarian aid grows, and rights-based organisations lose the capacity to respond.

The Global Costs of Donor Retreat

The consequence of these actions is aid withdrawal not as retrenchment but as escalation: a political choice that magnifies the very pressures it claims to alleviate. When donor governments redirect resources toward defence or short-term domestic priorities, the fallout is not confined to balance sheets – it destabilises fragile health systems, erodes education opportunities, and closes lifelines for those already most exposed to crisis. Women, children, LGBTQ+ communities, migrants, and people with disabilities bear the sharpest costs, precisely because the organisations best placed to support them – grassroots feminist and rights-based actors – are being stripped of resources. The result is not just diminished protection, but a hollowing-out of the global system’s ability to absorb shocks and build resilience. In this sense, the Global North’s retreat from its own commitments actively feeds the polycrisis, exporting instability outward while weakening the prospects for durable solutions.

The withdrawal of donor funding has left feminist and civil society organisations dangerously exposed at the very moment their work is most essential. In countries across Africa, the Balkans, and Central Asia, programmes on reproductive health, gender-based violence, and LGBTQ+ rights are closing, staff are being laid off, and safe spaces are disappearing.[xxxii] UN Women warns that millions of women and girls could lose access to lifesaving health services within months, while surveys of NGOs show widespread stop-work orders and collapsing partnerships. These cuts are not neutral—they embolden authoritarian actors, legitimise anti-rights narratives, and silence the grassroots voices most capable of holding states accountable.

Rather than reducing risk, the retreat of aid multiplies the very pressures of the polycrisis: health emergencies deepen, civic space shrinks, and fragile democracies weaken. By undermining feminist and community-led infrastructures of care and resilience, donor governments are accelerating instability at home and abroad. What this moment demands is not piecemeal fixes but polysolutions – funding and governance approaches that are long-term, rights-based, and inclusive, ensuring that those most affected are central to designing responses.[xxxiii] Without such a shift, the rollback of support will not only erode decades of progress but foreclose the possibility of more just and resilient futures.

The dynamics outlined in this article underscore that gender is not peripheral to the polycrisis but central to how its cascading effects are lived and resisted. The rollback of reproductive rights, the erosion of protections for LGBTQ+ communities, and the withdrawal of international aid reveal precisely the structural weaknesses described in the polycrisis literature: siloed governance, short-term political calculations, and the exclusion of those most affected from decision-making. These are not isolated policy failures, but systemic symptoms of institutions designed for simpler times, struggling under the weight of interconnected crises.

Moving forward demands what the polysolutions framework makes clear: integrated, rights-based, and justice-centred approaches. This means mapping how gendered vulnerabilities link with economic, technological, and ecological crises; investing in anticipatory governance and resilience-building; and placing feminist and civil society organisations at the core of crisis response, rather than at its margins. Above all, it requires shifting the narrative—from one of inevitable collapse to one of collective possibility. Unless equity and inclusion become the foundation of global responses, the rollback of rights will continue to fuel instability. But if gender is recognised as a litmus test of resilience, then advancing gender equality in the midst of crisis can itself become a lever for building more just, adaptive, and sustainable futures.

Biography

Chiara Valenti is a research and data specialist focusing on the socioeconomic impacts of displacement and migration. She applies gender-sensitive, rights-based approaches to humanitarian and development research, ensuring accountability to affected people. She has worked with international organisations, UN agencies, and NGOs across Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia-Pacific, and the MENA region.

The White House, via Wikimedia Commons (domaine public)

Sous les applaudissements, le « One Big Beautiful Bill » est signé—une loi qui, parmi ses coupes massives, supprime le financement des soins de réaffirmation de genre et prive des millions de personnes, dont des transgenres, de leur couverture Medicaid.

Notes & references

[i] Jean-Claude Juncker, State of the Union Address 2016: Towards a Better Europe – A Europe that Protects, Empowers and Defends (Strasbourg: European Commission, September 14, 2016).
[ii] Adam Tooze, “Welcome to the World of the Polycrisis,” Financial Times, October 28, 2022.
[iii] For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers, Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, [2025] UKSC 16, April 16, 2025.
[iv] Human Rights Watch, “UK: Court Ruling Threatens Trans People,” May 9, 2025.
[v] Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). An Interim Update on the Practical Implications of the UK Supreme Court Judgment. April 25, 2025.
[vi] Nick Triggle, “Puberty blockers for children banned in NHS in England,” BBC News, December 11, 2024.
[vii] Connolly, D.J., Meads, C., Wurm, A. et al. Transphobia in the United Kingdom: a public health crisis. Int J Equity Health 24, 155 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-025-02509-z
[viii] Sherman, Carter. “Trump’s Efforts to Defund Planned Parenthood Threatens US Healthcare System, Study Suggests.” The Guardian, August 13, 2025.
[ix] Lee, Chantelle. “Title X Freeze Widely Threatens Health Care Access.” Time Magazine, April 11, 2025.
[x] Johnson, Sarah. “US Destruction of Contraceptives Denies 1.4m African Women and Girls Lifesaving Care, NGO Says.” The Guardian, August 6, 2025.
[xi] DiAlesandro, Nico. “Every Anti-LGBTQ+ Move the Trump Administration Has Made in Its Second Hundred Days.” Them, August 11, 2025.
[xii] The term “Don’t Say Gay” laws refers to legislation introduced in several U.S. states that restricts or prohibits discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in school settings. Originally associated with Florida’s 2022 Parental Rights in Education Act, the phrase has since been used more broadly to describe similar measures limiting LGBTQ+ inclusion in curricula, classroom discussions, and school activities.
[xiii] Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Violations Against LGBTQ+ Communities in the United States: Joint Submission to the Universal Periodic Review of the United States of America, Fiftieth Session. May 28, 2025.
[xiv] Joint Economic Committee Democrats. Abortion Bans Harm Women’s Reproductive Freedom and Cost Our Economy Billions of Dollars. July 9, 2024.
[xv] ET Online. “NASA Employees Asked to Implement These Massive Changes in Work Communication after Trump’s Executive Order.” The Economic Times, February 7, 2025.
[xvi] Joselow, Maxine, and Lisa Friedman. “In Game-Changing Climate Rollback, E.P.A. Aims to Kill a Bedrock Scientific Finding.” The New York Times, July 29, 2025.
[xvii] Laville, Sandra. “Leading US Economists Urge Peers to Fight Trump’s Attack on Environment.” The Guardian, August 20, 2025.
[xviii] Innovating for the Public Good (IFPG). Barriers to Benefits: The Decline in Public Trust. R&D for Democracy. 2025.
[xix] European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE). Gender Equality Index 2024: Domain of Violence. 2024.
[xx] Eurostat, Crime Statistics, 2023.
[xxi] Europol, Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA), 2024.
[xxii] Council of Europe, Gender Equality Division, Cyber Violence Against Women and Girls, 2023.
[xxiii] European Parliament, Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality. The Impact of the Use of Social Media on Women and Girls. Brussels: European Parliament, 2023.
[xxiv] Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). Social Media Can Be Harmful for Kids – So What Can We Do? May 16, 2025.
[xxv] Kantola, Johanna, and Emanuela Lombardo, eds. Gender and the Economic Crisis in Europe: Politics, Institutions and Intersectionality. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017
[xxvi] OECD. Cuts in Official Development Assistance: Projections for 2025 and the Near Term. OECD Policy Brief, June 26, 2025.
[xxvii] Bond, “Gender, Education and Health Programmes Cut in FCDO’s UK Aid Allocations for 25/26,” Press Release, July 23, 2025.
[xxviii] OECD. Cuts in Official Development Assistance: Projections for 2025 and the Near Term. OECD Policy Brief, June 26, 2025.
[xxix] ILGA World et al., “Retreat from Development Aid Continues as More Governments Announce Funding Cuts,” Joint Statement, March 11, 2025.
[xxx] UN Women, Humanitarian Funding Cuts Threaten Women’s Rights: What’s at Stake and How to Help, May 13, 2025.
[xxxi] Alice Obrecht and Mike Pearson, “What New Funding Data Tells Us about Donor Decisions in 2025,” The New Humanitarian, April 17, 2025.
[xxxii] Šišić, Merima, and Derya Binışık. Beyond the Cuts: How the Defunding Affects Feminist and Civil Society Organizations. Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, March 13, 2025.
[xxxiii] Dan Schreiber, Sarah Hassnaoui, Anne Weyembergh, Malte Brosig, Kamatara Kanifa, and Anthony Tibaingana, From Polycrisis to Polysolutions: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Complex Global Challenges, PolyCIVIS Foundational Policy Brief no. 1 (March 2025).