NOW Fact Sheet: Project 2025’s Threats to Women’s Economic Equality

Without financial independence, women lack what they need to be safe and successful. Poverty is a policy consequence caused by a lack of commitment to programs like an expanded child tax credit, raising the minimum wage, advancing policies to promote equal pay, universal paid family and medical leave, affordable and accessible childcare and reforming federal assistance programs and other necessary steps.

The result? Poverty rates for women and girls are increasing, with one in nine adult women living in poverty today as measured by the Census Bureau's official poverty measure. And the official poverty rates for women of color are even worse: 16.6% of Black women and 16.8% of Latina women were in poverty last year as compared to 7.3% of white, non-Hispanic men.

1. Threats to Healthcare: Lack of access to affordable healthcare can lead to increased medical expenses and financial instability for women. Potential changes to healthcare funding and policies, such as reproductive healthcare services, would disproportionately affect women.

For example, Project 2025 wants to enforce the 1873 (you read that right - 1873) Comstock Act, which would prohibit mailing "abortion producing materials," which is another way of banning medication abortion, such as shipping Mifepristone, therefore forcing a woman to have to carry a child to term even though they can't afford to provide for the child or the medical expenses related to a pregnancy. Not to mention, there are numerous health reasons why a child can't be carried to term.

2.Threats to Social Safety Net Programs:Project 2025 will radically change Medicaid and Medicare, severely impacting people who rely on those services for healthcare needs. As many as 28 percent of single mothers live in poverty and are more likely to rely on social safety nets, such as Medicaid and Social Security. Reducing these programs will indirectly impact their financial stability and economic mobility. And, since women are breadwinners in 40 percent of families with children under 18, and about 70 percent will be the primary earner at some point during the first 18 years, the impact of this agenda will be widespread, devastating, and long-lasting.

3.Threats to Workplace Equality:The Project 2025 agenda will roll backregulations and protections in the workplace, hindering women's economic progress. Policies being proposed would weaken protections against workplace discrimination and harassment, will create a more hostile work environment, and affect job retention and advancement opportunities for women.

For example, Project 2025 wants to prohibit the Equal Economic Opportunity Commission from collecting employment data based on race. This will make it challenging to demonstrate racial disparities in hiring decisions, retention, promotion, or termination of employees, which will disproportionately affect women of color.

4.Threats to Education and Childcare: Project 2025 will cut the Head Start Program, slash free lunch programs, loosen baby formula regulations and potentially limit or delay baby formula availability through the WIC program, and eliminate Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which invests in children from low-income households so they can become proficient in reading and math. And Project 2025 proposes changes that would limit access to affordable housing for families with children, by imposing work requirements, time limits, and other eligibility restrictions.

Project 2025's agenda must not be implemented. It will threaten women's economic and social stability, leaving women still the most likely to experience poverty.

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