What Project 2025 Means for Women

Project 2025 could have a significant impact on women's rights and gender equality during a hypothetical second Donald Trump term.

The 900-page-long document, produced by conservative think-tank The Heritage Foundation, has been designed as a roadmap for an incoming conservative president, with a wide range of plans. Project 2025 includes policies that would uniquely affect women, including a clampdown on federal funding for abortion, the removal of "gender equality" language from government websites, and reducing access to contraception.

The project has also stated that it wants to "refocus gender equality on women, children and families," through a change of rhetoric that includes the renaming of the USAID Office of Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment as the USAID Office of
Women, Children, and Families.

Many of the proposed policies have been met with mixed reactions from the public. For example, data from YouGov shows that 52% of Americans oppose withdrawing federal approval for abortion pills.

Trump has recently distanced himself from the project, calling some of the policies "absolutely ridiculous and abysmal," but that hasn't stopped both Republicans and Democrats from rallying around the initiative to motivate voters.

Carrie Baker, a professor of women, gender and sexuality at Smith College, Massachusetts, told Newsweek that the distance between Trump and Project 2025 was smaller than he claims, as many of his top advisers are closely involved with the initiative.

"Its optics," she said. "They know that abortion is popular with the majority of the public."

Baker also said Project 2025's intended impact stretches beyond policies, arguing that it wants to prompt a wider cultural shift in the conversation around gender equality.

"Something that nobody is talking about is the fact that there's a lot in Project 2025 about reviving the traditional patriarchal family. It stigmatises single parenthood, and makes cuts to social support for single parents and children in single-parent families. To incentivize marriage, it punishes people that don't get married.

"They want to take Title X funding, which is supposed to go towards family planning and contraception, and redirect it towards 'marriage education' and the importance of marriage. And in there, they talk explicitly about biblical marriage."

Supporting Women

May Mailman, director at the Independent Women's Law Center and a former legal adviser to Donald Trump, told Newsweek that protecting parents, specifically mothers, was one of the most significant ways in which the project aims to support women.

The Independent Women's Law Center is part of the Independent Women's Forum, which is one of more than 50 groups and think-tanks that contributed to Project 2025's policy-making process.

Mailman said: "The same policies that benefit all Americans, like securing the border, reducing inflation, increasing economic opportunity, and decreasing regulatory strain also benefit women and girls.

"That said, Project 2025 focuses on protecting women and girls in endless ways, including under Title VII, a law designed to create sex-based protections at work. It has been twisted by the Biden administration to force women to shower with men, which harms a disproportionate number of low-income female workers.

"Project 2025 also aims to stop agencies more broadly from equating sex with gender identity. That will protect women in domestic abuse shelters and women in school locker rooms, sports, bathrooms and housing.

"In addition, Project 2025 aims to end discrimination against would-be foster parents who believe sex is rooted in biology, which would increase loving homes to girls in need. In addition, moms who advocate for their children's education would no longer be targeted as domestic terrorists by a politicized DOJ."

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