Trump’s battle against equality, the last great ‘backlash’ against women in the economy?

The little legend that is around Robby Starbuck He assures that he is a descendant of Cuban migrants in the US and that he was raised in a Christian home. Many knew about him when he launched a public campaign against the actress Megan Fox to criticizeUS sons used dresses and skirts. “You got into the wrong witch,” she replied. Starbuck has been immersed in its particular witch hunt instigating a crusade against business policies in favor of diversity and inclusion in Washington that victories has been scored in front of giants such as Walmart, Tractor Supply, John Deere, Harley-Davidson or your rival Indian Motorcycle. “The corporate United States is recovering reason,” he wrote in X when he got the Almighty Ford also yield and leave behind its inclusive policies and practices.

The career of this republican activist declared a declared follower of Donald Trump had already charged not a few pieces when the US president signed the decree to end the diversity, equality and inclusion policies (equality and inclusion (OF THEfor its acronym in English) in companies that had commercial relations with the federal government. Trump did not even have been in the White House for 24 hours when he stamped his rubric in the document and, with her, gave the definitive support to the movement against women’s rights and social and racial minorities that had been latent in the US for some time.

The doubt that plans now is whether that decree is the last step of its strategy or, on the contrary, it implies only the origin of a great setback in rights and advances that women had conquered in recent years at economic, business and labor level. If we are, ultimately, before the last great backlash Against women in the economic field.

The US has always had a complicated relationship with equality and, specifically, with equality in the field of economy. The country occupies 43 of 146 in the GLOOD GENDER GAP INDEX 2024 of the World Economic Forum, with an average score of 0.747 points (being 1 the parity and 0 the absence of it) and with a worsening of a thousandth in the last year. Countries like Libery, Cape Verde, Rwanda, Mexico, Burundi the Jamaica They are above him with better qualification. Europeans take 7 of the first 10 positions, with Iceland in first place (0.935 points), Germany in the seventh (0.810 points) and Space in the tenth (0.797 points) after climbing eight places compared to the previous year.

The global gender gap stood at 68.5% in 2024, compared to 68.6% of the previous year, which implies that in 12 months it closed just 0.1 additional percentage point. “The lack of significant and generalized changes from the last edition shows a slowdown in the rhythm of progress to achieve parity. According to current data, 134 years will be needed to achieve total parity, approximately five generations beyond the goal of the sustainable development objectives (SDGs) by 2030,” warns the study of the World Economic Forum.

The analysis of the gap is carried out based on four dimensions: economic participation, education, health and political empowerment. The gap in terms of economic participation is 60.5%. Women, on average, earn approximately 80% of what men perceive for jobs of equal value, according to the United Nations data

That is, the starting situation is already complicated. What can we expect in the second Trump era? “The order that signed as soon as the protection of women and girls weakens, including everything that has to do with work: the salary gap, the incorporation into the labor market … The order is the sample of its philosophy, a message to the world: diversity policies are considered by Trump as discriminatory measures and what the president raises is a questioning of gender inequality,” he says María SolanasDirector of Programs, and expert in gender equality and foreign policy of the Royal Institute Elcano. “A message is launched to all companies, not only to those who want to work with the administration, that equity is an not accepted parameter. If some companies attended to these measures by obligation, they are now totally released,” he adds.

Reverse

The change has begun to feel in companies that, as little, do not know how they should act in the new context. In Spain, the US embassy contacted its suppliers to request that they certify that they do not comply with diversity and equality policies, under penalty of facing a freezing of their payments. The Ministry of Labor and Social Economy hastened to go out and remember the national companies that “They must fulfill scrupulously“With the plans and regulations of equality, as well as with the protection of the diversity in force in the legal and constitutional system of Spain. However, the background noise remains.

“This level of distraction and chaos in companies is harmful to companies and for economic activity,” he warns Luisa GarcíaPartner and Global CEO of Corporate Affairs in Llyc. Garcia frequently travels to the US, where the consultant is in full expansion process, and shares with Economic news that in recent weeks they are receiving many consultations and helping clients to interpret the norm to adapt without giving up their commitments and the principles of equity that defend their own conviction and internal philosophy.

Other companies do not even consider. Metathe parent firm of Facebook and Instagram, announced the elimination of its Dei policies at the beginning of the year, appealing to a “change in the legal and normative panorama.” In this line is also McDonald’sthat Motu own At the beginning of the year, changes in its diversity, inclusion and equity programs. Among them, the fast food chain communicated that it will withdraw the specific goals – the so -called installments – to achieve diversity in the levels of upper leadership and that will end a program that encourages its suppliers to develop training in diversity. In addition, the company’s diversity team will be called Global inclusion equipment.

For Solanas, this reaction is not new. The researcher analyzed the impact of policies Trumpist During the first year of the First Legislature of the Republican and then he detected that in his first 12 months in the Oval Office he suppressed measures aimed at combating labor discrimination, the wage gap, sexual harassment at work and sexual abuse in school and university, as well as to guarantee sexual and reproductive rights. In the conclusions of your study Gender equality in Trump’s AmericaSolanas indicates that the president’s form to address the issues related to gender equality does not take into account the consequences that this has in social and economic stability. “The lack of referents of women in positions of political responsibility, the culture of silence in the case of gender violence, the salary gap or the lack of free access to family planning measures, in addition to putting new barriers to real and effective equality, perpetuate gender stereotypes that hinder the pending cultural change in most countries, not to mention the economic losses they represent for their GDP,” he says.

In this same sense it is expressed Marta Graño, Leadership and Innovation Professor at Obsless School, who considers that within Trump’s unpredictability, “if we rely on what she has announced so far and there is no legal incentive that fosters diversity and inclusion, the most predictable thing is that we go backwards.” The teacher recalls that in 2017 she repealed the Barack Obama regulations that forced companies to report the salaries of their employees to try to reduce salary differences. “Now there are no ads about what you are going to do with that salary gap, but there are also no measures that make you think of closing it.” It also highlights the impact that restrictions on reproductive rights may have, because “they limit women’s options in many aspects of the world of work and professional development,” or the dissemination of movements such as trad wives, that promote the return of women to the home. If we talk about access to leadership, “in the first stage he put Janet Yellen at the head of the Federal Reserve and Ivana Trump in an institute, but there were no legislation that foster this aspect, so the most reasonable thing is to think that it will now go back in that aspect.” In general, Graño concludes, “analyzing both what he did in his first mandate and the ads he has made, the perspective is that the gender gap in the US may not improve and even go back.”

Leadership

Experts agree that one of the aspects in which these changes will have more consequences is in the incorporation of women to leadership positions, something in recent years has advanced but not as much as you would expect. He Gender Gap Report 2025 women in leadership and visibility positions Prepared by graña for Obsiness School compiles several world leadership rankings and data, although different, all point in the same direction. For example: women represent 10% of CEOs in Fortune 500 companies; In the Forbes 2024 list, only 5 of the 100 most powerful people are women, which represents 5% of the total (in 2020 they were 3%); In the Harvard Business Review of 2024 that collects the best CEO in the world, 8 of the 100 best leaders are women, 8% of the total, and in the brand Finance, which collects the best valued CEOs, only 7 of the 100 leaders are a woman.

“An easy discourse about meritocracy that obviates the existence of biases that have always existed and that now can return is recovering. Doubt about women’s profiles is extended and it returns to the myths that women do not reach the management positions because they do not want, because they are not good or because they have no ambition,” says Luisa García. “It is clearly back and they are forcing us to change the conversation,” he laments.

‘Without filter’

García coordinates the recent report No filter Published on the occasion of the 8-M by LlyC about the conversation in social networks about equality and, specifically, on how these networks have been consolidated as an attack tool against feminist discourse. Their data after analyzing 8.5 million messages in X in 12 different countries reflect a “clear increase in polarization”, to the point that 50% of messages about feminism in the old Twitter are already negative. 98% of the profiles are already radicalized and the “antifminists resort to insults three times more than the most feminist radical.”

“That conversational climate is a cultivation broth For companies and organizations not to be publicly signified about their commitment to equity, a kind of self -censorship that leads to a self -fulfilling prophecy: advances are not counted because they feel they have nothing to win, “Garcia explains.

Even so, there are groups that resist. Appleanother flagship of the American business fabric, asked its counselors to vote against a proposal to eradicate the company’s dei programs. His CEO, Tim Cook, opposed frontally in a difficult balance between belonging to the privileged group of technocrats that surrounds President Trump and dare to bring him the opposite.

Looking for a positive angle to this situation, Luisa García considers that the scenario “is an opportunity for companies that want to continue betting on the commitment of equality and diversity in their environment and it is an opportunity for their corporate brands to come out reinforced, but they must be clear that on the way there will be a storm because, among other things, the advice will have to ratify what direction they follow and what support will give their human resources teams to make it come true.

And although “clearly” considers that we are in a moment of backlash Against women, he also believes that the situation is different from previous times because women “are more prepared to fight threats and there are more and more men convinced that this fight is worth it.”