A sweeping, year-one rundown of how Trump’s second-term power grabs and policy rollbacks are eroding women’s rights, healthcare and economic security.

This analysis was originally published by the National Partnership for Women and Families.

In the first year of the second Trump administration, there has been a barrage of harmful executive orders, the appointment of dangerous and unqualified political nominees, unprecedented firing of federal employees along with restructuring or near elimination of many federal agencies. Amidst a nonstop, chaotic whirlwind of daily breaking news, court decisions and more, the administration is abusing its power to turn back the clock on rights and protections for hundreds of millions of people.

Below we highlight some ways this administration has been particularly harmful for women and their families.

Threats to Women in the Workplace

1. Weaponizing the EEOC

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is an independent federal agency with a bipartisan slate of five commissioners; the agency is at the frontlines of civil rights enforcement, investigating and remedying employment discrimination charges. In FY 2023 alone, the Commission received more than 81,000 complaints of alleged discrimination, including discrimination by sex, race, religion and age. The EEOC plays a vital role in ensuring that all workers—and women workers in particular—are treated fairly; from 2014–2024, the EEOC recovered $5.6 billion for workers who were discriminated against.

The Trump administration has taken actions to kneecap the EEOC’s true purpose of enforcing civil rights laws and anti-discrimination provisions and worked to weaponize the office to investigate employers that President Trump has a personal vendetta against. The weaponization of the EEOC’s remaining staff and resources includes its questioning of 20 law firms over their hiring practices, many of which the president has made clear he views as hostile in a series of high-profile executive orders. With new EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas and a confirmed Republican majority, the EEOC’s priorities and limited resources are clearly shifting to align with the President’s false claims of systemic discrimination against white men. In FY 2025, the commission filed only 93 lawsuits, a ten-year low.

2. Attempting to withdraw guidance on workplace harassment

On December 29, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission took steps to rescind necessary guidance on workplace harassment; the request to withdraw the 2024 guidance completely bypasses the comment period that was used when developing the guidance, during which the EEOC received over 37,000 comments. The EEOC’s attempt to avoid public comment underscores the consequences pulling the comprehensive guidance would have for workers across the nation relying on their employers to have clear, actionable guidance to protect them from harassment in the workplace. It’s one more step taken by President Trump’s EEOC to abandon protections for women and LGBTQ+ employees in favor of a politicized focus on religious discrimination and perceived discrimination against white men.

3. Threatening the implementation of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA)

The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is a commonsense law that requires employers to offer reasonable accommodations to workers who have needs related to pregnancy, childbirth and other related medical conditions. It ensures workers have access to basic accommodations, such as bathroom breaks or leave for healthcare appointments. It is enforced by the EEOC, which has the authority to investigate and settle discrimination complaints, including those that would be covered by the PWFA. While the previous administration defended the law and rules from attacks, pregnant workers are now threatened by the Trump administration’s approach to the rule and the EEOC. Research by the National Partnership finds that efforts to overturn or undercut the enforcement of the PWFA put 2.8 million pregnant workers at risk each year.

4. Undoing long-standing protections for federal contract workers from workplace discrimination by rescinding Executive Order 11246

For nearly sixty years—during Democratic and Republican presidential administrations alike—EO 11246 was in place to ensure that federal contractors took proactive steps to promote equal opportunity for employment and did not discriminate against their employees on the basis of race, religion, sex and more. The order was an important tool against rooting out historic gender discrimination, unearthing difficult to find pay disparities, and helping to increase the number of women in upper level, higher paying jobs in leadership when they’d been previously shut out due to their gender. Now that the Trump administration has rescinded the executive order in its entirety, those that contract with the federal government are no longer required to actively advance equal opportunity.

5. Undermining the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP)

The OFCCP is tasked with enforcement of anti-discrimination laws for federal contractors, including but not limited to EO 11246, and is meant to enforce key protections for veterans and disabled people. The Office oversees contracts with more than 25,000 firms—which employ 22 percent of the American workforce—and has recovered billions for workers and job seekers who suffered from discrimination. The National Partnership finds that between 2014 and 2024, the OFCCP obtained over $260 million for employees and job seekers who were discriminated against and provided financial relief to almost 260,000 employees and job seekers. Despite its obvious role in protecting at least 36 million workers, the Trump administration is actively gutting its enforcement power, reassigning its staff to other DOL offices, and seeking to eliminate its already meager funding.

6. Abandoning enforcement of protections for disabled federal contract workers

Executive Order 11246, the now-rescinded regulation for federal contractors, prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin; Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 is an important counterpart, prohibiting employment discrimination by federal contractors on the basis of disability. It requires federal contractors to take intentional action to hire and retain qualified employees with disabilities, allow individuals to self-identify as workers with disabilities to help ensure important data tracking, and sets a goal for federal contractors to aspire to create a workforce where at least seven percent of employees are people with disabilities. These regulations are vital for advancing equity for the 3.7 million women workers with a disability. Despite this, President Trump’s Department of Labor paused enforcement of the anti-discrimination law for months, then proposed a rule to eliminate key provisions completely.

7. Revoking the $15 minimum wage for federal contractor workers

A Biden-era order raised the minimum wage for federal contractors to $15 an hour in 2022. Thanks to inflation adjustments, that rate increased to $17.75 last year. While that order raised wages for hundreds of thousands of workers employed in the private sector at companies with government contracts, on March 14, 2025, the Trump administration revoked the order, opening the door for some employees to experience up to a 25 percent cut to their pay. The workers helped by the Biden executive order—and thus, those most harmed by the Trump administration’s decision to undo it—are disproportionately women, Black workers and Hispanic workers.

8. Working to strip millions of domestic workers of minimum wage and overtime protections

Domestic workers, such as home care workers, nannies and housecleaners, have historically been excluded from important legislation that ensures workers’ rights to overtime protections and the federal minimum wage. This workforce is overwhelmingly made up of women and women of color and despite their crucial work, they contend with a lack of workplace safety, collective bargaining rights, and staggeringly low pay. After years of fighting for their rights, domestic workers won important minimum wage and overtime pay protections through Department of Labor rulemaking, which went into effect in 2015. Now, the Trump administration working to strip millions of domestic workers of those rights through another rulemaking process which, if successful, would further lower wages, increase turnover and undo a decade of progress.

9. Working to undo affirmative action requirements that help ensure women and workers of color have access to apprenticeship programs that can lead to good-paying jobs

Apprenticeship programs are proven to help workers secure good-paying jobs in the trades, such as construction, manufacturing and utilities. It is vital that all workers, including women, people of color, workers with disabilities and other historically excluded groups, can participate in apprenticeship programs that would increase their lifetime earnings potential and economic security. However, women are grossly underrepresented, making up only 14.4 percent of apprentices. Rather than investing in apprenticeship programs as President Trump promised, his Department of Labor (DOL) has pushed to make apprenticeships less accessible. The DOL proposed a rule that would remove requirements that certain apprenticeship programs conduct targeted outreach, recruitment and retention activities; that those programs set goals for enrollment based on race and gender; and that programs support workers with disabilities.

10. Intimidating private sector companies to do away with efforts to implement equitable hiring practices and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs

On day one of the administration, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at dismantling “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” programs. President Trump and his conservative allies often use “DEI” as an all-encompassing phrase synonymous with perceived discrimination against white men, but that ignores the long history of racism and sexism that these programs and civil rights laws are designed to remedy. Instead, the Executive Order is a proxy for attacks on civil rights and discrimination protections overall. It targets equity measures in the federal government and threatens advances in the private sector in equitable hiring, equal pay and anti-discrimination for women. Companies have used the “evolving legal landscape” to cut or change their diversity, equity and inclusion goals, including Accenture, Pepsi, and Citigroup. President Trump’s Department of Justice is enacting an intense pressure campaign, promising subpoenas and investigations into corporations with diversity programs.

11. Installing political appointees with anti-worker agendas

President Trump has chosen multiple people as political appointees with anti-worker agendas that would harm millions of women workers. For example, Keith Sonderling, the Trump administration’s pick for Deputy Secretary of Labor, voted against the EEOC’s final rule on the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act during his time as a commissioner. Notably, President Trump has tasked Russell Vought with running the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), an agency that plays a powerful role in dictating the experience of women and families across the country. OMB leads the creation of executive orders and legislative proposals from the Executive Branch, manages the Presidential Budget, and oversees the regulatory process happening across agencies. Vought was a major architect of Project 2025 and is now a key player in the chaotic, illegal expansion of presidential power that occurred in the first year of the Trump administration.

The administration has also selected nominees to critical civil rights enforcement agencies who pledge allegiance to their priorities rather than protecting the rights of workers, such as Brittany Panuccio to be a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, who suggested that she would agree to cease investigating discrimination charges filed by women if directed to do so by the president.

12. Threatening to eliminate the Women’s Bureau at the Department of Labor

The Women’s Bureau was established by Congress in 1920 and is the only federal agency mandated to work on advancing economic opportunity for working women. For more than 100 years, the office has conducted research, drafted policy and engaged in grantmaking and outreach to improve working conditions and wages for women across the workforce. For example, the Bureau has funded Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations grants, awarding more than $21 million dollars to organizations across the country to expand pathways for women in good-paying jobs, as well as providing research and grants that made passing state-level paid leave programs possible in about a dozen states. Instead of investing in programs and initiatives that address the barriers women face in the economy, the Trump administration is committed to dismantling the very agency dedicated to that work.

13. Introducing dangerous uncertainty to the economy through the chaotic implementation of extreme tariffs, increasing the risk of an economic downturn

The implementation of President Trump’s signature economic policy proposal of broad and un-strategic tariffs is stoking fears of a global trade war. Specifics of the tariffs have shifted throughout the year, but economists across parties have raised the alarm that President Trump’s rash economic decisions are increasing the possibility of an economic slowdown or recession. If a slowdown or recession becomes reality, there could be serious consequences for women’s wealth and long-term financial well-being. Already, we have seen meager job growth for the year. Monthly job growth in 2025 averaged just 49,000 jobs a month, compared to 168,000 in 2024. This drop was driven by losses in industries affected by tariffs, as well as painful cuts to the federal government. Women’s declines were also pronounced—they averaged 78,000 jobs gained each month in 2024, compared to just 35,000 in 2025.

Threats to Women’s Health

14. Increasing care costs by allowing vital Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax subsidies to expire

President Trump signed into law the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBBA) in July 2025 that did not extend tax subsidies that make health coverage affordable for over 21 million enrollees in the ACA Marketplace, including 10 million women. The expiration of these subsidies at the end of 2025 will lead to significant premium increases, loss of coverage and increased uncompensated care for healthcare providers unless Congress acts. An estimated 4.8 million people could become uninsured in 2026.