Trump elected for a second term: what does this mean for women? 

By Georgia Tilson 

‘It’s time we chose our leaders from the whole population, not just half of it’. 

These are the words of Gloria Steinem, one of the founding mothers of second-wave feminism. This fight began in the US in the 1970s and is still ongoing in 2025. 

It would be hyperbole to call Trump’s win a death nail to feminism, but the 2024 election has certainly inflicted a critical wound on the women’s movement. Whether this be a fatal wound or just a graze is to be found out over the next four years. 

But why is Donald J Trump an enemy of women’s rights movements? It comes down to two main issues: his rhetoric around women and his stance on abortion access. 

The manner in which Trump talks about women has always shown him to have a deeply misogynistic worldview and can be traced back to his days on the TV show ‘The Apprentice’, when he told a female contestant that it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees [1]. His sexist remarks became a major issue for his campaign in 2016 when Access Hollywood resurfaced comments he had made in 2005, specifically when he said, “It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything” [2]. Mr Trump has not made an effort to reel in his comments about women, in fact, during the 2024 election, he seemed to double down and direct these comments at his opponent Kamala Harris, a highly qualified woman. These remarks included labelling Harris as ‘a weak, foolish woman’, ‘mentally impaired’, ‘a monster’ and ‘a dummy’ [3]. 

This anti-women rhetoric has shone through into his actions as President, which ultimately culminated in his appointment of three pro-life, conservative justices to the Supreme Court of the United States during his first term, who voted to overturn Roe V Wade in 2022 [4]. This was the 1973 Supreme Court case which decided that the right to attain an abortion was a matter of privacy (a right outlined in the Constitution) and, therefore, that the government lacked the power to prohibit abortions, essentially making the right to terminate a pregnancy a constitutional right. The overturning of this precedent in 2022 caused shock and outrage and stripped women of a right they had held for 50 years. It is now up to the individual states to decide their abortion law, and this has seen conservative states restricting access. For example, in Texas abortion is banned in almost all circumstances. It even ensures provisions for private citizens to sue abortion providers and those who assist patients who are seeking an abortion after 6 weeks of pregnancy [5].  The fear that comes with a second Trump presidency is that a Republican-controlled Congress may move to pass a national abortion ban, and Trump has refused to say if he would veto such a ban if it came across his desk [5]. This leaves women’s rights and, ultimately, women’s lives in limbo if they cannot access life-saving treatment, which on occasion may require an abortion. 

However, women have not crumbled with the news of the election. Instead, they will continue to do what they have done for generations: they will fight. Unlike previous fights for women, this time, they have access to hold more positions in the branches of the US government than they have in the past, whether by sitting in Congress or working within the judiciary. 

We cannot say for certain what the next four years will look like, but we can be sure that women will not be a priority of this administration. 

Sources:

[1] Borchers, Callum. 2017. “Alex Jones’s Overtly Sexist Campaign to Discredit Megyn Kelly.” Washington Post, June. https://doi.org/10-2019/WashingtonPost/2015/08/09. 

[2] “Donald Trump Makes Offensive Comments about Women.” 2016. BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2016-37595321. 

[3] Schwartz, Rafi. 2023. “61 Things Donald Trump Has Said About Women.” The Week. April 26, 2023. https://theweek.com/donald-trump/655770/61-things-donald-trump-has-said-about-women. 

[4] Lee, Chantelle. 2024. “What a Donald Trump Win Would Mean for Abortion.” TIME. Time. October 23, 2024. https://time.com/7096575/donald-trump-abortion-plan-2024/. 

[5] McCann, Allison, and Amy Schoenfeld Walker. 2024. “Tracking Abortion Bans across the Country.” The New York Times, December 3, 2024, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/us/abortion-laws-roe-v-wade.html.