Statement of Jocelyn Frye, President of the National Partnership for Women & Families
WASHINGTON, D.C. – June 4, 2025 – The latest federal office that has fallen victim to cuts from the Trump administration is the Women’s Bureau at the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). The Women’s Bureau is more than a century old, and its work has protected the interests of working women and advocated for their equality and economic security since opening its doors in 1920. [This dangerous proposal is part of a pattern of attacks against working women, following previous efforts to eliminate the DOL agency that protects civil rights.]
“Since being created by Congress 105 years ago this week, the Women’s Bureau at the Department of Labor has made significant contributions to improving women’s status and treatment in the workplace. Their work was important then, and it remains critically important today. Nonetheless, the Trump administration has made it crystal clear that it has little interest in acknowledging, let alone addressing the current challenges facing too many working women. The demeaning, dismissive language in the administration’s budget about the Bureau being an ‘ineffective policy office that is no longer necessary’ speaks volumes, and is a revealing reminder of the administration’s increasing hostility toward expanding women’s job opportunities and growing women’s work participation.
For decades, the Women’s Bureau has provided compelling evidence about solutions to the barriers women face in their workplaces, helped ensure our work environments are safer and healthier, published research on women’s pay and pay disparities and so much more. The administration’s observation that ‘women’s participation in the labor force has increased and changed dramatically’ since the Bureau’s founding does more to strengthen the case for the agency than undermine it. And, it shows that while the administration is quick to give lip service to the progress women have made, it has no understanding of, or commitment to, how to sustain that progress into the future. You cannot be committed to the progress of working women at the same time that you are removing the very tools that helped make that progress possible.
“This proposed closure is an unmistakable, troubling signal about this administration’s unwillingness to grapple with and effectively address the day-to-day challenges that women workers are navigating. Not only has it not shown interest in supportive workplace policies to ensure that women are paid and treated fairly, are not shut out of job opportunities and can meet their care needs without jeopardizing their economic stability, but the administration has taken harmful action to remove the enforcement tools so essential to creating workplaces where women can thrive.
“The shuttering of the Women’s Bureau will eliminate the performance of important research that informs major policy decisions and will severely undermine the economic security for women and working families well into the future.
“The National Partnership is very clear about the importance of having concrete policies and infrastructure to support women workers and create fair workplaces free of discrimination. We urge Congress to support working women and fully fund the Women’s Bureau in its Fiscal Year 2026 budget, and we will continue to band together with our partners and use our collective power to make progress toward the policy supports that women need to thrive in workplaces across the country.”
# # #
Media Contact:
Gail Zuagar
Email
202-986-2600
