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The anti-gender movement is an anti-rights movement

August 2026 by Initiative for Inclusive Feminism

Over the past decade, a broad international consensus has emerged among human rights, feminist, LGBTIQ+, sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), and democracy organizations that anti-gender politics constitutes a reactionary global anti-rights mobilization threatening gender equality, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and the human rights of all women and girls and all LGBTIQ+ people. While these anti-gender actors differ in their origins, ideologies and organizational forms, they increasingly cooperate across borders in efforts to roll back established human rights protections and undermine democratic institutions.

UN Women has warned that movements encompassing anti-gender, "gender-critical" and "men's rights" politics form part of this wider anti-rights pushback against the rights of all women and girls and all LGBTIQ+ people. It notes that these movements falsely portray the rights of trans people as being in conflict with women's rights, creating divisions within feminism while opening the door to broader attacks on gender equality and human rights. UN Women further affirms that "the feminist goals of intersectional justice and gender equality can only be achieved if all women and all LGBTIQ+ people are included as part of a broad, intersectional feminist movement rooted in the universality and indivisibility of human rights." (1) Attempts to portray "gender-critical" politics as a distinct rights-based position obscure its place within this broader anti-rights ecosystem.

This understanding is shared across the international feminist movement. In 2026, more than one hundred feminist organizations across Europe endorsed a joint manifesto for transfeminist solidarity, affirming that "defending the rights of trans people is a feminist fight" and calling on feminists to stand together against anti-rights movements seeking to divide women's rights from the rights of trans people. (2) Months earlier, 28 feminist organizations and gender studies communities emphasized that feminism is a universal human rights movement built on solidarity, intersectionality, and compassion, and that there can be no feminism without trans people. (3)

In The State of the World’s Human Rights (2025–2026), Amnesty International stated that the world is on the brink of a perilous new era, driven by powerful states’, corporations’ and anti-rights movements’ assaults on multilateralism, international law and human rights, and called on states, international bodies and civil society to collectively resist these attacks to prevent a predatory, anti-rights order from taking hold at a pivotal moment for humanity. (4)

Across many countries, anti-rights actors have increasingly turned to lawfare to roll back established human rights protections. Anti-rights actors have used courts, legislatures and administrative bodies to restrict legal recognition, limit access to healthcare, weaken anti-discrimination protections and narrow civic space. These campaigns are often presented as efforts to protect "free speech" or "women's rights," while in reality undermining the universality and indivisibility of human rights. A particularly insidious form of anti-rights lawfare seeks to suppress analysis and public discussion of anti-rights actors. By intimidating human rights organizations, scholars, journalists and activists through legal threats and litigation, anti-gender actors seek not only to silence criticism but also to prevent anti-gender politics from being recognized as part of a broader anti-rights project.

The United Kingdom has become one of the clearest examples of this broader anti-rights trend. In Resolution 2417 (2022), the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe condemned the "highly prejudicial anti-gender, gender-critical and anti-trans narratives" used to undermine LGBTI equality, identifying the United Kingdom alongside Hungary, Poland, Russia and Turkey as countries where extensive and often virulent attacks on the rights of LGBTI people had been taking place for several years. (5) The United Kingdom demonstrates how anti-rights politics can hollow out democratic societies from within. Sustained anti-gender campaigns by political actors, sections of the media and organized anti-rights groups backed by opaque transnational funding networks have undermined the human rights of trans people, weakened democratic norms and challenged the universality of human rights. Michael O'Flaherty, the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, emphasized in August 2026 that the attacks on LGBTI people are the warning sign of a wider backlash against democracy. (6)

We therefore reaffirm that defending the human rights of trans people is not separate from defending women's rights, democracy or universal human rights. It is part of the same struggle against anti-rights politics. We call on human rights institutions, feminist organizations, political parties, trade unions, academic communities and civil society organizations to reject anti-gender politics in all its forms, including anti-rights mobilizations advanced under the label "gender-critical", oppose attempts by anti-rights actors to divide women's rights from the rights of trans people, and stand together in defense of universal human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.

The statement is available on the website of the Initiative for Inclusive Feminism here: https://en.inkluderendefeminisme.no/anti-gender-movement-anti-rights-movement/

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The anti-gender movement is an anti-rights movement

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