Dealing with a Double Whammy: The Trump Administration's Directives on Gender and Development

The Trump administration’s directives to freeze most of US foreign assistance and dismantle USAID have hit the international development ecosystem hard. For people working on issues related to gender equality and inclusion, the administration’s actions have hit even harder. Along with pausing aid and pushing to place thousands of USAID employees on administrative leave, President Trump reinstated an expanded Mexico City Policy, preventing foreign NGOs that receive most forms of US global health assistance from providing or promoting abortion services using funds from any source. As CGD colleagues and I have emphasized, this action alone has dire implications for women’s wellbeing and livelihoods.

President Trump also issued executive orders restricting the use of the term “gender” in federal policies and documents and ending government DEI and “environmental justice” programs. While these actions were presented in the interest of guarding against “gender ideology” and wastefulness, there’s a lot of collateral damage that comes along with them. Instead of “defending women” as the first directive purports to do, these actions will overwhelmingly harm women and undermine global prosperity and stability. This marks a sharp deviation from the norm upheld by previous US presidencies (including the first Trump presidency), with a shared nonpartisan commitment to invest in women’s economic empowerment as a component of US foreign policy.

This post highlights key activities that US foreign assistance has supported to promote gender equality, outlines likely implications of the Trump administration’s directives, and offers some thoughts on what can be done in response.

The US government’s work to promote gender equality

The US has been a leading global supporter of gender equality and women’s economic empowerment, providing an average of $6 billion per year in bilateral official development assistance (ODA) to projects with a gender equality policy objective in 2021-2022, behind only EU institutions ($11.4 billion), Germany ($11.4 billion), and Japan ($7.4 billion) in volume. While the US has been the largest provider of ODA for sexual and reproductive health and rights, it has also made investments in other crucial areas to enhance economic inclusion. Most recently, under the Biden administration, USAID led a range of initiatives to close gender gaps by supporting women and girls including efforts to increase women’s financial and digital inclusion, strengthen the global care sector, promote women’s civic and political leadership, advance girls’ education and learning, and support women on the frontlines of responding to climate change and humanitarian crises. These efforts were anchored by the launch of a $300 million Gender Equity and Equality Action Fund in 2023, which provided a platform for USAID and the State Department to jointly invest in women’s economic security.

GEEA built on a legacy of US foreign investment in women’s economic empowerment. Despite President Trump similarly reinstating the Mexico City Policy, cutting funding to the United Nations Population Fund, and retreating from international development more broadly during his first administration, he sustained a focus on women’s economic empowerment. Notably, he launched the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) initiative, based on the rationale that: “When women are economically empowered, they re-invest in their families and communities, producing a multiplier effect that spurs economic growth and contributes to global peace and stability”. Created by Ivanka Trump and led by the White House, W-GDP took a “whole-of-government” approach to enhancing women’s economic empowerment globally, with a goal of supporting 50 million women by 2025. The initiative included an emphasis on gender-lens investing, with the US International Development Finance Corporation’s (DFC’s) 2X Women initiative focused on mobilizing investment in projects that are women-owned, women-led, or that provide products or services that empower women. As CGD colleagues have noted, DFC’s 2X initiative provided a foundation for the Biden administration’s subsequent investments in gender equality.

Stretching back even further beyond the first Trump administration, USAID has played a key role in improving data and evidence. For people working on gender equality in low- or middle-income countries, the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program has been a valuable resource. Founded by USAID in 1984, the DHS program has supported over 400 surveys in over 90 countries, working with host-country implementing agencies to produce representative data on family planning, fertility, marriage, mortality, nutrition, work, reproductive health, child health, malaria, and HIV/AIDS that is comparable across countries using a set of standard model questionnaires centered on adolescent girls and women aged 15 to 49. Repeated waves of data have allowed policymakers and researchers to track trends over time, which has been useful for decision-making as well as for monitoring and evaluating programs and policies. While countries can and do independently collect data on women and girls, USAID has served a coordinating role through the DHS program and provided a platform to crowd-in additional funding from UNFPA, UNICEF, the World Bank, and other national governments.

Finally, in addition to expanding data availability, USAID has supported the generation and synthesis of evidence on what works to promote gender equality, through initiatives like Development Innovation Ventures, with an emphasis on ensuring cost-effectiveness.

Implications of the Trump administration’s policies

Beyond the consequences resulting from a decline in support explicitly focused on gender equality objectives, several other initiatives affected by the US foreign aid freeze are particularly likely to exacerbate gender gaps in wellbeing, given the disproportionate impacts of health shocks and humanitarian crises on women and girls. This includes funding for PEPFAR, the Presidential Malaria Initiative, disaster relief, and climate finance. Although the Trump administration has issued freeze waivers for lifesaving assistance, the scope of these waivers has been unclear and uncertainty about the longer-term future of US foreign assistance remains.

Altogether, the current Trump administration’s funding cuts and policy shifts could have substantial repercussions, including:

• A decrease in access to contraception, leading to an increase in unplanned pregnancies and unsafe abortions.
• A decline in delivery of essential health services, leading to a decline in maternal and child health, and an increase in maternal and child mortality.
• A decrease in women’s economic participation and financial inclusion, leading to an increase in vulnerability and distress, particularly for people in communities most affected by conflict and humanitarian crises.
• An increase in the risk of intimate partner violence (IPV) because pregnancy and economic distress are both associated with an increased risk of IPV and both likely to rise with funding cuts and restricted access to sexual and reproductive health services.
• A decrease in women’s civic and political participation, leading to a decrease in gender-responsive services and policies.
• A reduction in gender-disaggregated data, which will make it harder to track and respond to changes in gender gaps.
• A decrease in research and evidence on effective approaches to promote gender equality.

Collectively, these changes are likely to lead to weakened livelihoods, communities, and economies.

Responses to the double whammy

So, what can be done in response to the Trump administration’s double whammy? Here are five starting points:

1. Domestic resource mobilization and ownership of gender equality policy agendas. One might argue that the Trump administration’s pullback provides a long-overdue opportunity for recipient countries to take over US-supported activities and fill this gap on their own. We’re seeing some of that happening in the health sector, with efforts to reimagine the global health financing architecture. Additionally, individual governments are stepping in, with the Nigerian government approving $3.5 billion in emergency funding to procure 150,000 ARV treatment packs over the next few months and establishing a committee to create a transition and sustainability plan to mitigate impacts of health funding disruptions, for example. At a regional level, African heads of state are coming together to discuss increased domestic resource mobilization. A similar increase in domestic investment to support gender equality and a prioritization of related policies would be timely. This includes identifying opportunities to invest in gender-responsive social protection, expanding care infrastructure, and applying a gender lens to fiscal policy.
2. New global leadership on gender equality. Although there are ways to expand domestic engagement, many countries don’t have the resources to step in on short notice. The abrupt way in which the Trump administration’s directives have been issued leaves limited scope for immediate substitution by fiscally-constrained governments. There’s a role for other governments to step up to champion global gender equality, both by increasing their financing and by elevating this as a policy issue in global fora. The wave of global conservatism and pullback from foreign assistance suggests that some donors that have historically filled the gap caused by US funding withdrawals may be less likely to step in. However, there are some promising prospects emerging. The UK’s recently increased ODA budget and historical leadership in this space present an especially compelling opening. Additionally, many of the leading providers of ODA already have a strong focus on gender equality including Germany, France, Japan. Australia, Canada, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden have been prominent in funding projects with a gender equality objective and have opportunities to step up. Beyond shifts in bilateral investments, leading the charge in multilateral and global fora will also be key. With South Africa holding the 20 Presidency this year, it has an opportunity to put gender equality at the forefront of the G20 agenda. It has already embraced “equality” as one of its three core themes. Similarly, Spain’s role as host of the upcoming financing for development conference presents another opening to center this issue ahead of the conference in June.
3. Allyship from people outside the gender equality sector. This is a time for collaboration across issues. Many people working in the gender equality sector are grappling with the personal and professional ramifications of these seismic policy and financing shifts. People are also concerned about the prospects of bringing negative attention to their work or to the work of others in this sector, because of the risk that doing so will attract scrutiny or backlash. People may also want to continue their work without diverting their scarce resources and energy towards publicly responding to the administration’s actions. Therefore, support from other communities of people working in other sectors who feel safer speaking up on these issues and acting publicly to promote gender equality and inclusion will be more valuable now than ever.
4. Investments from philanthropic organizations and private sector actors. While philanthropic foundations don’t have the same level of resources as donor governments, they still have a vital role to play. A recent post on the Alliance for philanthropy and social investment worldwide blog outlines five ways in which philanthropists can respond – directly supporting local organizations and groups providing essential services, supporting grassroot movements, offering long-term flexible grants, investing in community-driven strategies for sustainable development, and working to strengthen ecosystems to promote self-sufficiency. These suggestions are especially true for women-led local organizations and movements as well as those working to advance gender equality, because they are especially likely to face funding cuts or freezes. Additionally, the Trump administration’s actions provide an invitation for more philanthropists from the Global South to invest in supporting gender equality and for private sector actors to step up to look out for ways to address gender gaps through their work.
5. Support for civil society and political participation. The swift pace with which directives have been issued under the Trump administration has been proof of the role of political participation. Within a mere three weeks, we’ve seen a dramatic transformation of the gender equality and international development landscapes. These events highlight the importance of investing in strengthening the pool of future leaders who will work to promote gender equality and of supporting civil society organizations to defend it.

We know from numerous studies that investing in the wellbeing of women and girls promotes resilience and economic security, particularly in times of crisis. In the face of the multiple challenges threatening the livelihoods of vulnerable populations across the world today, continuing this work is crucial.