When Aid Is Cut, Women Pay The Price

Forbes

01-08-2025

By Lauren Hendricks, President and CEO, Trickle Up
In mid-July, the U.S. Congress passed a devastating rescission package that claws back billions in foreign aid—funds that were already designated to fight global poverty, support climate adaptation, and promote economic opportunity.
For those of us working on the frontlines of international development, particularly in programs focused on economic inclusion for women, this is more than a policy setback. It's a blow to the millions of women working every day to lift themselves and their families out of extreme poverty.
The Unequal Burden on Women
We already know that women are disproportionately affected by poverty, displacement, and climate change. According to UN Women, women are more likely than men to live in poverty and less likely to have access to financial services. In rural Guatemala, Indigenous women face systemic barriers to land ownership and credit. In eastern India, women are often excluded from asset ownership and formal labor markets. In refugee settlements in Uganda and Colombia, displaced women navigate survival and caregiving with minimal support from humanitarian systems.
Economic Inclusion Works—When It's Funded
Economic inclusion programs that pair cash transfers with coaching, financial tools, and training are among the most effective ways to support women's long-term resilience. These are not handouts, they are investments. And they work.
Throughout my work in international development around the world, I have seen how a small infusion of resources—delivered alongside personalized, contextual coaching—can help a woman launch a small business, access a savings group, and build a pathway toward financial independence.
Evidence from programs like the Graduating to Resilience program in Uganda shows that these approaches can lead to sustained improvements in income, food security, and well-being. We've seen women who were once excluded from household decision-making become community leaders, peer coaches, and entrepreneurs. This is what foreign aid makes possible.
Short-Term Thinking, Long-Term Harm
Cutting this lifeline now, when economic inequality is rising and climate shocks are intensifying, is both shortsighted and dangerous. Foreign aid represents less than 1% of the U.S. federal budget, and yet it has an outsized impact in the lives of women around the world—especially those at the margins.
The justification for these cuts has been cloaked in the language of fiscal responsibility. But let's be clear: there is nothing fiscally responsible about abandoning the women who are holding up families, communities, and informal economies around the world. There is nothing responsible about walking away from proven programs that move people from dependency to agency.
A Dangerous Retreat from Global Responsibility
We are witnessing a global retreat from aid at precisely the moment when we should be doubling down on local solutions. And in that retreat, there's a dangerous silence about who gets left behind.
As traditional donors scale back, there is a palpable sense of urgency and opportunity among local leaders. They are ready to lead, design, and scale solutions rooted in their own communities, but they still need partnership and resources. Cutting foreign aid sends a clear signal: that leadership will have to wait. But it shouldn't.
Now is the time to recommit—not to the old models of top-down aid delivery, but to locally led development that centers women, shifts power, and invests in long-term resilience.
Let's not balance budgets on the backs of the world's most vulnerable women. Let's build a future where their leadership isn't optional, it's central.