STATEMENT: The State of the Union for Working Women? Under Attack.

February 24. 2026

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For Immediate Release
Feb 24, 2026

Media Contact
Nazirah Ahmad
[email protected]

Statement by Executive Director Noreen Farrell on Trump’s State of the Union claims of a booming economy while his administration wages economic warfare against women and their families, and codifies misogyny into government policy

 

Feb. 24, 2026 — “Tonight, President Trump stood before Congress and delivered what working women across this country have come to expect: bogus claims about affordability, a supposedly booming economy with more Americans working than ever before, and the elimination of diversity and equity policies he says were holding America back. 

Lies.

We know what our grocery bills look like. We know what our rent costs. And countless mothers currently being forced out of the workforce in record numbers know exactly whose economy is booming, and it isn’t theirs. It’s the billionaires receiving tax advantages and the president’s wealthy allies cashing in on lucrative public contracts.

Countless mothers currently being forced out of the workforce in record numbers know exactly whose economy is booming, and it isn’t theirs.

Tonight’s culture war performance is a smokescreen designed to dominate headlines while Trump’s administration quietly carries out the most systematic dismantling of workplace protections for women in modern American history.

Here’s the actual state of the union for working women: The gender wage gap has widened for two consecutive years, the first time since the 1960s. An estimated 455,000 women were pushed out of the workforce between January and August in 2025 – on Trump’s watch. And throughout 2025, men joined the labor force at three times the rate of women. In December alone, 91,000 women left the workforce while 10,000 men joined.

Mothers with young children saw the steepest workforce participation decline in more than 40 years. And when confronted with these numbers, the president’s response was to freeze more than $10 billion in childcare and family assistance funding to five states, ripping away the very support that keeps mothers in the workforce. A court had to step in to stop it.

Childcare costs are rising at twice the rate of inflation while his immigration enforcement has driven 39,000 childcare workers out of the workforce

This is not an accident. This is intentional policy.

What the president failed to mention is that childcare costs are rising at twice the rate of inflation while his immigration enforcement has driven 39,000 childcare workers out of the workforce. He didn’t mention that DOGE-led layoffs disproportionately hit agencies where women were the majority of workers, or that nearly 300,000 Black women left the labor force in just three months.

Every tool that holds employers accountable has been gutted. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has been weaponized against the very workers it exists to protect. The watchdog that held federal contractors accountable for pay discrimination has been effectively shuttered — leaving 1 in 5 American workers without oversight. Workplace harassment guidance has been rescinded. Pay discrimination data collection is being dismantled.

This strategy is deliberate: eliminate the enforcers, scrap the rules, erase the evidence. You don’t have to repeal a single civil rights law if you destroy every mechanism for enforcing it.

The president can stand before Congress and call this progress. Working women call it what it is: the war on women’s progress.”

No one is fooled. The DEI policies this president loves to attack were equal opportunity programs, pay transparency requirements, and harassment protections that helped ordinary Americans get ahead. Tearing them down doesn’t usher in a ‘Golden Age of America.’ It rigs the system so the powerful face no accountability and working families have no lifeline. 

The Trump tear-down of rights accompanies inaction from the administration and congressional conservatives on popular policies supported by most working families like affordable childcare, paid family leave, raising the minimum wage, and better protections against gender-based violence and sexual exploitation – the very kind on display in the Epstein files.

The president can stand before Congress and call this progress. Working women call it what it is: the war on women’s progress.”