From local newsrooms to global headlines: How Equality Now partnered with journalists to advance women’s rights in 2025

At a time when women’s rights face mounting, coordinated attacks and facts are increasingly distorted or dismissed, independent, evidence-based journalism has a vital role to play. By scrutinising power and exposing the gaps between the law and reality, it is one of the strongest safeguards for transparency, accountability, and reform. Rigorous reporting exposes injustice, challenges misinformation, and brings clarity and context to the forces shaping women’s lives.

That’s why Equality Now is proud to collaborate with trusted journalists, editors, and media outlets whose commentary shines a spotlight on the legal and systemic barriers preventing the change needed to end violence and discrimination against all women and girls, everywhere.

How Equality Now showed up in the world’s media in 2025

In 2025, Equality Now was mentioned in more than 12,000 media stories across broadcast, audio, print, and digital platforms, reaching hundreds of millions of people. We featured in coverage in over 20 languages, spanning high-profile international outlets – including Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, the BBC, France 24, EFE, Newsweek, O Globo, South China Morning Post, and TRT World to name a few – alongside trusted local and specialist media providing bespoke reporting attuned to regional and community perspectives in Africa, Asia, the Americas, Eurasia, and the Middle East.

Journalists drew on Equality Now’s cutting-edge research, expert legal analysis, and close collaboration with survivors and regional partners to bring depth, accuracy, and context to newsworthy women’s rights issues. Together, this coverage helped inform public debate, counter false narratives, and reinforce Equality Now’s role as a trusted global source on gender equality and the law.

Here are a few media coverage highlights:

Addressing the backlash against women’s rights

For over 30 years, Equality Now has analysed and reported on sex discrimination in laws worldwide. In 2025, we tracked an alarming rise in the enactment of regressive legislation, intensifying efforts to roll back women’s hard-won legal protections, and coordinated attempts by political actors to manipulate multilateral mechanisms, including withdrawing from or weakening international treaties and UN institutions critical to gender equality.

In October 2025, Latvia’s parliament voted in favour of withdrawing from the Istanbul Convention, Europe’s leading human rights treaty on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. 

Equality Now’s Eurasia Regional Representative, Tamar Dekanosidze, was quoted extensively in global media, including by Associated Press and Politico Europe, which featured her warning that withdrawal would significantly weaken protections for women in Latvia, while setting a dangerous precedent for others seeking to undermine international law and dismantle safeguards against gender-based violence. Amid intense national debate and international media coverage voicing concerns, Latvia’s President Edgars Rinkēvičs refused to sign the withdrawal bill and returned it to Parliament for further review. 

Shining a spotlight on online sexual exploitation and abuse

Equality Now and our partners published major reports on online sexual abuse and exploitation (OSEA) in Kenya and India, centring the firsthand testimonies of survivors to expose the real-world harms of digital abuse. Drawing on survivor insights and expert legal analysis, the research identified legal and systemic failures and set out evidence-based recommendations for legal and policy reform.

Equality Now’s research sparked extensive media attention, helping elevate OSEA into mainstream public debate. Amanda Manyame, Equality Now’s Digital Rights Advisor, was a leading expert voice commenting in a range of outlets, including the BBC, eShe, Feminism in India, KBC Channel 1, The Guardian, The Hindu, The New India Express, The Star and The Standard, amongst others. 

Reporting on sexual violence in the Middle East and North Africa

Equality Now’s 2025 report revealing how Arab League countries fail rape survivors through discriminatory laws, weak accountability, and barriers to justice, received significant media engagement. 

Media highlights included in-depth interviews with Naglaa Sarhan on BBC Arabic and OkayAfrica, sharing the findings of our research and calling for survivor-centred legal reform. France 24 Arabic featured Dr Dima Dabbous, Equality Now’s Regional Representative in the MENA, explaining the need for legal protections against marital rape across the MENA region, and in The New Arab, an opinion piece by Paleki Ayang examined why marital rape remains uncriminalised in all 22 League of Arab States countries and made the case for a consent-based definition of rape.

Raising awareness about harmful practices around the world

Equality Now works globally to end harmful practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM) and child and forced marriage. Central to this work is raising public awareness and deepening understanding of the root causes and consequences of these abuses, building the momentum needed to drive legal reform, accountability, and lasting change.

Global Executive Director Mona Sinha authored a powerful opinion piece in HuffPost on child marriage, and in an article for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, she warned that women’s rights are being systematically rolled back worldwide, and there is an urgent need for renewed global commitment to gender equality.

Equality Now’s Eurasia experts drew attention to the persistence of child and forced marriage in the Caucasus, with OC Media speaking at length to Janette Akhilgova and Tamar Dekanosidze about the drivers and efforts to end these harmful practices across the region.

Rolling Stone featured Anastasia Law, shedding light on the lack of legal protection against child marriage in many US states. 

The Globalist published an article by Sally Ncube on how the climate crisis is increasing the risk of child marriage for girls in Southern Africa, and Down To Earth quoted Nina Masore extensively explaining how extreme weather is a “threat multiplier” fuelling child marriage and gender-based violence in South Sudan. 

Equality Now’s work to end FGM was also widely covered. Caroline Lagat commented to The Star about regional collaboration to eliminate FGM in East Africa, while Santana Simiyu spoke with Agence France-Presse following the tragic death of a baby from FGM in The Gambia – where Equality Now is working alongside partners to defend the law banning the practice, which is currently under threat from a case before the Supreme Court seeking its repeal.

Leandra Becerra highlighted the need for stronger action on FGM in the Americas in interviews with efeminista and El Spectador. In South Asia, Julie Thekkudan gave insight to EFE on India’s Supreme Court’s acknowledgement that thousands of girls are subjected to FGM, while El País published a feature on Equality Now’s research showing growing rejection of FGM among Sudanese communities in Egypt.