By Ann Menasche
This article is the opinion of the author and doesn’t necessarily represent the opinions of FIST as an organization.
Many feminists breathed a big sigh of relief when President Trump issued his Executive Order on gender ideology, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/, recognizing two immutable sexes and restoring the definition of women to adult human female, without which any women’s rights, even the ERA, lose all meaning. This has the immediate benefit of women’s bathrooms and changing rooms, prison cells and sports teams at least on the federal level being reserved once again for us alone apart from males, regardless of their gender identity.
At the same time, Trump revealed through another EO that what he had in mind for the sex class of women wasn’t exactly what we feminists have struggled for over the past century. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/ Instead, he sought to undermine women’s right to equal job opportunities alongside men and to return to the mythical past of a “meritocracy” where white males somehow were always the ones who managed to get ahead not of course because of the “old boys” network providing a leg up, but because they were simply the smartest and most qualified around.
Trump’s direct target was to destroy DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs, which he labelled “radical and wasteful”, both in the federal government and in private companies that contract with the government. DEI is the corporatized watered-down version of the robust affirmative action programs of the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s that helped even the playing field and advance women and African Americans in all sectors of society where they had previously been excluded. Those affirmative action programs were eroded by successful court challenges and Proposition 209 in California in 1996.
DEI, reduced to a shadow of its formal self, at times even became a caricature -removing sex as a protected class in favor of gender identity, targeting gender critical feminists and lesbians as “bigots”, and emphasizing “politically correct” language (the rules of which changed frequently), virtue signaling, avoiding micro-aggressions, and urging brow-beating and confessions of guilt, as a substitute for real meaningful measures that would provide equal opportunity to women and people of color in the workplace. Yet DEI was the only way the white males that still dominate the workplace were forced to pay a little attention to whether they were truly the only ones capable of exercising leadership and doing a job well or whether a few Blacks, Latinos or women should be allowed that opportunity.
As anyone knows who has looked at the research or who has opened their eyes to the dynamics in the workplace, sex and race discrimination are still widespread though difficult to prove on an individual basis. (Employers and managers frankly don’t always tell the truth.) See https://hbr.org/2017/10/hiring-discrimination-against-black-americans-hasnt-declined-in-25-years. See also https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/12/14/gender-discrimination-comes-in-many-forms-for-todays-working-women/. And it is not white males that are experiencing the brunt of the discrimination.
Yet the Trump administration is making the preposterous claim – rooted in white supremacy and male supremacy – that without DEI, there will be a meritocracy that will return us to the time where our “betters” – white males like himself- the only or best qualified, will regain their rightful place in society. He is being cheered on by people who are claiming all over social media that the problem with the Los Angeles fires arose because the Mayor and Police Chief are two “unqualified” women (one, also a person of color) rather than due to policies of austerity and the failure to maintain the fire hydrants which have nothing to do with sex or race.
The most frightening part of Trump’s actions against DEI is his mandating that people report their co-workers who violate his new DEI policy, launching a witch-hunt against anyone who is suspected of utilizing DEI. Of course, the best way to prove one’s innocence is to never hire or promote women or people of color in the first place.
It is essential for women’s existence as a sex to be recognized, but obviously, it is not the whole enchilada. WE WANT EQUALITY! And affirmative action is a necessary part of getting us there.