When women’s rights are sidelined in foreign policy, democracy and security suffer.
As President Donald Trump rewrites U.S. foreign policy and threatens the international order, he is also dismantling long-standing bipartisan commitments to women’s equality.
For decades, policymakers across political parties understood that political, economic and social progress cannot be achieved by leaving half the population behind. Advancing women’s opportunities, leadership and rights through foreign policy and programs was seen not only as the morally right course, but as an effective strategy for promoting peace and prosperity around the globe.
The first Trump administration, in recognition of these facts, took actions that seemed to belie support for women’s economic empowerment—for example, President Trump signed the bipartisan Women, Peace and Security Act into law in 2017 to advance women’s leadership and protect women in times of conflict.
But Trump’s second administration has taken a sharply different approach, mounting a sustained assault on women’s rights and reversing bipartisan policies his own administration once championed.
Trump is following the authoritarian playbook—and backlash against women’s progress is a central tactic. Nullifying laws to protect women from violence, excluding them from meaningful participation in decision-making, weaponizing technology to threaten them, and reducing their civic space, are just a few of the tools authoritarians use to consolidate power and control.
Doubling down on this assault, Trump began the year by decreeing that the U.S. will no longer participate in 66 international organizations, including most United Nations entities advancing women’s equality—from U.N. Women, to the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict. He claims these organizations are harmful and ineffective. In reality, they provide critical expertise and foster international cooperation to address some of the world’s most urgent challenges, from poverty and sexual violence to crisis response.
In his new national security strategy, Trump asserted that the greatest threats to the U.S. don’t come from China or Russia, but rather from “radical gender ideology and woke lunacy.” What should have been a serious discussion of national security instead focused on “rooting out so-called DEI and other discriminatory practices” and warning of the supposed dangers posed by Europe’s liberal democracies. According to multiple press reports, Trump’s recent appearance at Davos was conditioned on reducing or eliminating topics such as climate change, women’s empowerment and diversity from the World Economic Forum agenda.
As the first and last U.S. ambassadors-at-large for global women’s issues, we can attest to the impact of this relentless assault. When the Trump administration shuttered the Office of Global Women’s Issues at the State Department—an office we once led—it drastically weakened the United States’ ability to enforce laws addressing violence against women, advance women’s economic empowerment, and promote women’s participation in foreign policy.
The U.S. Human Rights Report was also stripped of references to violations of women’s rights, signaling that the United States will turn a blind eye to gender-based crimes and decline to condemn abuses committed by even the most notorious offenders.
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has purged several high-ranking military women from leadership and key roles and is intent on punishing women who do not meet his “warrior” standard out of the artillery, infantry, armor and combat roles in which they currently—and competently—serve. He has attempted to take an ax to the Women, Peace and Security Act (WPS), even though the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the military describe the WPS program as “a low-cost, high-yield uncontested advantage over our competitors.”
The administration also eliminated the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has devastated the lives of women and children in war-torn countries and led to rising malnutrition mortality and deaths due to a shortage of life-saving anti-malarial and HIV drugs. At a time of the largest increase in deadly wars in six decades, desperately needed humanitarian assistance has slowed to a trickle.
How We Stop the Damage
What can be done about this assault to women’s progress and to historically bipartisan American foreign policy interests? We must be strategic—not merely symbolic—in our defense of women’s rights.
We must document, monitor and expose harmful actions as they are being perpetrated in real time, and demonstrate the impact of these dangerous, arbitrary and callous actions on the lives of those affected, on government effectiveness, and on global stability and prosperity.
We must expand our global partnerships and coordinate with allies. For years, the U.S. provided substantial funding for policies and programs that advance women’s empowerment. Now, other nations must find ways to share financial and programmatic responsibility to sustain these efforts.
We must also build broader coalitions of support within the U.S. to defend this agenda. Effective messaging is essential. Whether our language refers to gender, men and women or human security, the mission remains unchanged.
We do not have the luxury of hopelessness and inaction. There is work to be done. Women around the world are on the frontlines—building peace where there is war, addressing climate change, and defending democracy and human rights. They are risking their lives. Challenging this assault on women’s progress in the United States and around the globe is more urgent than ever.
Great Job Geeta Rao Gupta & the Team @ Ms. Magazine Source link for sharing this story.
