By Stefano Gennarini, J.D.
C-FAM
The Trump administration launched several unprecedented attacks against gender ideology and DEI at the United Nations over the last two weeks, shocking European countries that promote homosexual/transgender issues.
U.S. diplomats urged UN agencies to drop gender ideology and DEI, which stands for diversity, equity and inclusion. They called such policies “radical”, “immoral” and “demeaning, unfair and dangerous to women and girls.” They also warned the agencies that the US is reviewing international organizations “to assess our relationship and determine which UN organizations align with our interests.”
U.S. efforts are already paying off. A decision about the internal organizational culture of the UN agency for women dropped an entire section on “diversity, equity, and inclusion” following U.S. interventions. And there are reports that UN agencies are scrubbing their websites of all references to DEI.
UN agencies have been at the forefront of promoting gender ideology and affirmative action for decades, including sex-based quotas. The term “gender” was coined in UN policy in the nineties, long before the U.S. federal government began using the term under the Obama presidency.
Over the last decade the UN gender agenda has expanded to promote transgender and homosexual issues, including through the concept of “intersectionality.” This type of policy promotes preferential policies based on gender and race under the pretext of overcoming historical inequality and structural discrimination. Such a wide conception of gender has been criticized by conservatives and feminists as a threat to women. The Trump administration has become a vehicle for those concerns.
“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and wellbeing,” U.S. diplomats said during the executive board of UN Women, the UN agency dedicated to women’s issues this week. They asked the agency to use “clear and accurate language in policies that recognize that women are biologically female and men are biologically male,” suggesting that the U.S. government expects UN agencies to rollback terms like “gender” and return to use the term “sex” instead.
UN Women is the leading UN agency promoting gender ideology, including the theory that biology does not determine sex and that men who identify as women are in fact women. UN Women’s role in promoting gender ideology is made even more controversial because of the nature of the agency. Unlike traditional UN programs and agencies which deliver food, medicine, and life-saving assistance, UN Women is a UN agency exclusively dedicated to lobbying governments across the world to adopt gender ideology and DEI in their laws and policies.
Last week, U.S. diplomats voted against a set of country plans of the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, because they included mandates to promote gender ideology and DEI. “These country program documents contain terms and concepts that promote immoral discrimination and advance harmful gender ideology in defiance of biological reality both of which conflict with US policies,” U.S. diplomats said. “The U.S. objects to any UNICEF projects to advance such programming in counties.”
“It is US policy to recognize two sexes, male and female and not to promote gender ideology,” they said. “It is particularly disturbing that this language is being used in UNICEF programming documents. Children should be protected from this dangerous ideology and its possible results”
UNICEF has promoted gender ideology since the year 2014, through a position paper calling for the recognition of the diverse sexual orientation and gender identities of children and their parents.
Delegates from EU countries, the United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico, and most Western countries were shocked by the U.S. interventions. They called on UN agencies to ignore the U.S. government’s request and to work to overcome opposition to gender ideology.
