Dear Kent Streeters,

As you all may have heard by now, Louise is taking a well-earned sabbatical until early September. During the next several weeks, we will be introducing you to other members of Kent Street’s leadership team through Happenings “The Week in Perspective.”  This week’s piece is from Monica Ciolfi.

My Kent Street Coalition passion is reproductive rights. Lyn Lindpaintner and I co-founded Kent Street’s Abortion Freedom Project. So naturally, I want to write about where gender equality finds itself in the wreckage that is Trump II.

Beyond billionaires and millionaires, few Americans are spared from Trump’s rampage. But in addition to Trump’s many stated targets, –starting with immigrants, and including liberal judges, Democrats, so-called DEI hires, the woke, people of color, trans people, Medicaid and SNAP beneficiaries, federal employees, and anyone perceived to have personally crossed him, — there is an unstated one: females. The freedom of half the population is in the crosshairs of the Trump administration’s embrace of white Christian nationalism and its deeply patriarchal ideology.

In each of Trump’s explicit target groups, women and men together incur the harm, of course. Yet even here, women in America are poorer than men, so Trump’s explicit targeting hits us harder. And then, there is the additional unacknowledged targeting of females as a group. Because of this extra layer of wreckage, I want to take this opportunity to list some of the many examples of the Trump administration’s undeclared war on women.

One of the most significant examples is the reversal of Title IX guidelines. By narrowing the definition of sexual harassment and raising the burden of proof required of victims on college campuses, the administration has made it much harder for survivors of sexual assault—overwhelmingly women—to seek redress or protection. This not only discourages reporting but also emboldens institutions to return to practices that prioritized institutional reputation over survivor justice.

Reproductive rights have suffered profound setbacks, as we know. The administration has pursued restrictions on abortion at the federal level, encouraged states to pass punishing laws, and appointed judges hostile to reproductive freedoms. The resulting patchwork leaves millions of women, particularly in marginalized communities, with insufficient access to safe abortion and contraception, or none. The defunding of Planned Parenthood restricted not just abortion services but critical preventive health care, further worsening health disparities. In some States, pregnant women are denied life-saving treatment, others are literally being jailed for having a miscarriage.

The targeting extends to women in the workforce. Efforts to scale back equal pay initiatives have stalled progress toward closing the gender wage gap. Reversing pay data collection requirements shields discrimination from scrutiny. And the administration’s rollback of the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces executive order also weakens incentives for government contractors to comply with equal opportunity and anti-harassment laws.

Internationally, the harm to women is almost unfathomable. The reinstatement and expansion of the Global Gag Rule—denying U.S. funding to NGOs offering, referring, or even discussing abortion—has a devastating ripple effect. Organizations worldwide lost vital funding, stalling programs in maternal health, family planning, HIV prevention, and infant care. This policy not only endangers millions of women’s lives and well-being, but also signals to world leaders that women’s health and rights don’t matter. The administration also ended funding to the UN Population Fund, further eroding global progress on women’s health.

Beyond specific policies, there’s the administration’s rhetoric. Embracing and amplifying voices hostile to women’s progress, Trump shows his disdain for women’s representation and equality.

Perhaps the greatest injustice is the erosion of hope—the shrinking of possibility and ambition for a new generation of girls. Witnessing policy reversals and seeing fewer women in prominent leadership roles, many now face renewed barriers just as outdated ones had begun to dissolve. The message is unmistakable: aspirations and achievements for an entire sex can be rolled back. Females’ second-class status is reaffirmed.

As we Kent Streeters work to protect and defend Trump’s many targets, let’s not forget that females are losing ground across the board. Half the population is, essentially, a double target of Trump as he corrodes the very foundations of equality, justice, and innovation that move societies forward.  His rampage reverberates. And our work continues. 

View the full Happenings email for this week here.