STATEMENT: Trump’s War on Women is Now Targeting Their Children

January 8. 2026

For Immediate Release
Jan 8, 2026

Media Contact
Nazirah Ahmad
[email protected]

Statement by Noreen Farrell, Executive Director of Equal Rights Advocates, which fights for gender justice in workplaces and schools across the country

San Francisco, CA, Jan. 8, 2026 — “The Trump Administration’s decision to freeze $10 billion in childcare funding across five states is not fiscal responsibility. It’s a political vendetta and economic warfare against women and children.

This funding freeze will devastate working mothers already struggling to stay in the workforce. More than 450,000 women left the workforce last year and labor force participation among mothers with young children continues to plummet. Unaffordable childcare is a primary driver of this exodus and now the administration is making it worse by demonizing childcare providers and cutting off assistance to millions of families.

This administration has spent the past year dismantling every protection that helps women succeed at work. It gutted the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, eliminating 60 years of workplace protections for women employed by federal contractors. It attacked diversity programs that created pathways for women into leadership. It kneecapped the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, firing commissioners and stripping its ability to enforce discrimination laws. It’s compromising federal data collection systems, threatening our ability to measure pay equity. 

This Administration is bent on forcing women out of the workforce and back into the home. When you eliminate equal opportunity programs, attack workplace protections, and then snatch away childcare funding, you are engineering an economic crisis for women.

Working families deserve better than a government that treats its own people as the enemy.”

To request an interview contact Nazirah Ahmad at [email protected] or 704-290-6869.