The past year has been marked by alarming funding cuts and policy shifts that threaten global progress towards gender equality, the latest example of which is the Trump administration’s Promoting Human Flourishing in Foreign Assistance (PHFFA) Policy. Announced last week, three new regulations collectively aim to expand the Mexico City Policy by restricting foreign NGOs, US NGOs operating overseas, and international organizations receiving non-military US funding from promoting abortion services, “gender ideology,” and “discriminatory equity ideology.” The new rules apply the Mexico City Policy to a larger set of organizations and go beyond the previous focus on global health funding to now include all non-military funding, potentially tripling the amount of affected funding. Additionally, the PHFFA policy’s broad scope and ambiguity about how it will be operationalized heighten the risk that it will impose unprecedented constraints on global gender equality efforts, by having a chilling effect on organizations implementing a wide range of initiatives to improve women’s economic inclusion and wellbeing.
CGD convened the 10th Birdsall House Conference on gender equality with the theme of “Beyond the Backlash: Charting a New Course for Women and Work in a Changing Global Economy” to chart a path toward future progress amid growing challenges. Here’s what emerged as key to creating a bulwark against these headwinds.
Reconstruct the foundation for progress, with care as the cornerstone
The most transformative shift required for gender equality is centering care work. In her keynote address on Gender and the Care Economy in the Developing World, Nancy Folbre articulated a fundamental reorientation: care work must be recognized as both an economic input and a social output. Her call for “less artificial intelligence and more care intelligence” underscores the importance of redefining the metrics by which we measure progress.
This shift reveals how deeply our current economic architecture disadvantages women. When we treat human capabilities to realize our full potential as mere inputs into GDP, rather than as the ultimate goal of development, we systematically undervalue care work, distort policy priorities, and perpetuate inequality across employment, public finance, and beyond. Putting care at the center—not as a women’s issue but as an economic and social foundation—creates a solid basis for progress.
Build on evidence to fortify impact with constrained resources
With this foundation in place, we must leverage what we know works. The conference’s session on understanding and overcoming barriers to women’s paid work included a set of reviews synthesizing evidence on effective interventions. I presented on domestic drudgery, Rachel Cassidy on access to capital, Manuel Contreras Urbina on violence against women, and Rachael Pierotti on the role of men. A growing body of related research examines other barriers to women’s paid work. This evidence base provides an informative blueprint in an era of funding cuts.
As Charles Kenny documented, the Trump administration’s aid, migration, and trade policies in 2025 disproportionately harmed women. The latest PHFFA regulations will likely intensify this impact. When resources shrink, the imperative to invest in proven, evidence-based interventions intensifies. Identifying and addressing persistent knowledge gaps also becomes critical.
Connect micro-interventions to macro-transformation
Evidence alone, however, is insufficient without systemic change. The conference’s session on fostering inclusive labor markets made clear that bridging gender gaps requires simultaneous interventions at multiple scales. Anukriti presented work exploring the scope for digital technology to overcome women’s job search barriers in India, which suggested potential complementarity between micro-level initiatives and macro-level reforms. At a macro-level, Caren Grown showed how rethinking fiscal policy—linking tax and spending reforms—can create gender-equitable economies. Gaurav Chiplunkar showed that falling gender barriers can account for over a quarter of global economic growth over the last 50 years, making gender equality not a social issue but a macro-critical economic imperative. Katie Auth’s call to shift the “women and energy” conversation from focusing on rural household electrification to reliable power for businesses underscores how infrastructure shapes employment opportunities, particularly for women.
Taking a multi-level approach recognizes that individual women’s economic inclusion depends on structural conditions: fiscal policy, infrastructure, and the broader economic environment.
Strategically innovate to surmount coordinated opposition
The conference’s closing panel confronted the reality that progress towards gender equality has sparked a coordinated and well-funded global anti-rights movement. As Geeta Rao Gupta observed, “we have been out-networked, out-messaged, out-financed, and out-coordinated” by actors who have co-opted feminist movement-building tactics.
Yet, acknowledging this reality creates space for strategic innovation. Stephanie Oula reminded us that the Beijing milestone demonstrated “transformative progress is possible within the span of a generation.” Sarah Iqbal noted “a sense of optimism and resilience” in Africa, driven by youth-led activism, stronger local ownership, and emerging sustainable financing models. These examples point toward concrete strategies: rebuilding cross-sector coalitions, revitalizing multilateral engagement, investing directly in local organizations, and reframing narratives.
This reframing must include men. As Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli observed, “we’ve elevated this concept that women have to rise, but what people hear is: as women rise, men fall.” Emphasizing shared prosperity counters zero-sum thinking. Similarly, aligning gender equality with broader economic goals makes it hard to dismiss as a secondary concern. As Caridad Araujo stated: “Gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls are at the center of the development agenda.” Moreover, her recognition that “gender inequality implies a huge misallocation of talent” presents the issue in economic efficiency terms that transcend critiques of discriminatory equity ideology. This is especially true for women’s representation in leadership (my colleagues Michelle Rao and Eeshani Kandpal have a new blog out on that).
A decade of learning and an outlook of optimism
Nancy Birdsall’s reflection on the conference’s 10 years captured reason for optimism: “there’s more and more research that shows that you can’t really have development in the fullest sense of the word until you have women fully engaged using all their talents and all their enthusiasm... and all their ‘caringness.’”
The path forward, therefore, requires:
- Recentering care work as foundational to progress
- Investing in evidence-based interventions to overcome resource constraints
- Connecting micro-level interventions to macro-level reforms
- Building resilient, cross-sector coalitions that include men
- Reframing gender equality in terms of shared prosperity and economic efficiency
As policy restrictions tighten and resources diminish, integration between these interconnected elements becomes more important.
The next decade will determine whether the current backlash represents a temporary reversal or a longer retreat. The answer depends on our ability to translate evidence into action, micro-interventions into macro-transformation, and political constraint into strategic innovation.
You can find the full event recording along with links to presentation slides and papers here. Stay tuned for more, including this upcoming February 11 event on how major countries should prioritize amid aid cuts.
