One year on from President Donald Trump’s striking orders to dissolve USAID, the cost of failing to invest in vulnerable populations, particularly women, continues to climb. With this year’s International Women’s Day theme being ‘give to gain’, the spirit of giving – at least in the US, the world’s largest provider of foreign aid – remains starkly in retreat.
The decision to dismantle USAID in early 2025, first framed as a fiscal measure, was largely a rejection of what the administration viewed as ideological overreach. Gender-related activities were singled out by Trump as being particularly excessive, pointing to the legacy of the Joe Biden administration, which had committed $2.6bn for USAID to spend on gender equality programmes. These initiatives provided crucial support for non-governmental organisations addressing healthcare, education and economic inclusion issues for women in volatile countries. However, Marco Rubio, secretary of state under Trump, later stated that these programmes spent ‘billions in ways that did not serve’ or rather harmed US interests. Within months, much of that life-saving infrastructure was frozen.
In fragile and conflict-affected states, women and girls are often the first to lose access to healthcare, education and financial services when aid provision contracts. Here, the consequences are neither abstract nor distant. Refugees International found that USAID cuts have disproportionately targeted woman and girls globally, cancelling 88% of maternal and child health funding, 94% of sexual and reproductive health funding and nearly 80% of gender-based violence prevention and response funding. In South Africa, funding cuts have translated to the closure of HIV clinics. In Afghanistan, which has suffered the most severe impacts of the cuts, medical programmes have been terminated, while initiatives tackling malnutrition and malaria across Africa have been slated too.
Rhetoric shift
The aid reductions that led to this did not occur in isolation; they were accompanied by a broader rhetorical shift. Government agencies reportedly circulated internal guidance flagging hundreds of words to limit and avoid. These ranged from ‘gender’, ‘disparity’, ‘inequality’ and even ‘women’. Once the federal government deemed this language politically charged, the response beyond Washington was swift.
Many institutions in the tech and finance sectors followed suit, quietly disbanding diversity, equity and inclusion teams or rebranding inclusion efforts under less ‘loaded’ terminology. Where language shapes sentiment and sentiment shapes structural consequences, this should tell us that anti-DEI rhetoric does not remain rhetorical for long.
Gender on balance
The implications extend beyond aid budgets; they reach into the foundations of global finance themselves. OMFIF’s Gender Balance Index measures the proportion of men and women in leadership positions across central banks, commercial banks, sovereign funds and pension funds. Despite mounting backlash against DEI, last year’s edition found that North America continues to lead regionally in gender balance across all institution types.
With shifts in the region and ripple effects internationally posing considerable threats to this progress, the question is: how long will the US lead against this tense political landscape? In the short term, rollbacks are causing lower employee morale, increased turnover and reputational damage. But whether the effects of last year’s DEI rollbacks reverberate as quickly across the boards, banks and other positions remains to be seen for financial institutions.
Regardless, what critics would call a prideful move on Trump’s part last year continues to trigger a drawn-out humanitarian crisis. This year, International Women’s Day arrives at a particularly paradoxical moment, where ‘women have never been closer to equality and never closer to losing it’. The theme ‘give to gain’ suggests that investment in women yields collective dividends. While the evidence supports this, the politics, increasingly, does not.
If you’d like to know more about OMFIF’s gender balance work, contact [email protected].
Janan Jama is Content Editor at OMFIF.
Join OMFIF on 22 April for the global launch of Gender Balance Index 2026.
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