CNN
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday he was ending the Defense Department’s Women, Peace and Security program which he termed a ‘Biden initiative’ that was enacted by President Donald Trump in his first term, championed by his daughter Ivanka Trump and based on a law co-sponsored by Secretary of State Marco Rubio when he was a member of the Senate.
Experts say the move will have significant consequences for women in the military and the US military’s goals abroad.
“This morning, I proudly ENDED the “Women, Peace & Security” (WPS) program inside the @DeptofDefense. WPS is yet another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops — distracting from our core task: WAR-FIGHTING,” Hegseth posted.
“WPS is a UNITED NATIONS program pushed by feminists and left-wing activists. Politicians fawn over it; troops HATE it. DoD will hereby executive the minimum of WPS required by statute, and fight to end the program for our next budget. GOOD RIDDANCE WPS!”
Hegseth later appeared to back-track, saying in a follow-up post that the initiative “straight-forward & security-focused” in 2017, but was “RUINED” by former President Joe Biden.
Rubio seemed to have a very different view on the program recently, touting his involvement at the International Women of Courage Awards earlier this month.
“President Trump also signed the Women, Peace, and Security Act, a bill that I was very proud to have been a co-sponsor of when I was in the Senate, and it was the first comprehensive law passed in any country in the world – the first law passed by any country anywhere in the world – focused on protecting women and promoting their participation in society,” Rubio said on April 1.
Ivanka Trump lauded the initiative in 2019, saying she was “proud to announce” that Colombia would also develop a WPS National Action Plan.
“@POTUS signed into law Women, Peace and Security, making the United States the 1st country in the world to enact #WPS legislation,” she said in a tweet in 2019.
It remains unclear how the program will end, given Hegseth also acknowledged the Pentagon would continue enacting “the minimum of WPS required by statute.” But, Kathleen McInnis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has studied the intersection of gender and national security, described Hegseth’s move as “bizarre,” particularly his declaration that WPS is a “woke… -Biden initiative.”
“This is huge,” McInnis said of the impact of ending the Pentagon’s participation in WPS. “I mean ultimately, this is going to have a big bearing on whether or not the United States is able to recruit and retain a military force that’s capable of fighting and winning the nation’s wars. That’s how big a deal this is. If the future of the force looks increasingly female, eliminating the Women, Peace, and Security toolkit is not going to help us recruit and retain the force we need. End of story.”
“This is Trump 45 policy,” she said. “This is his law. And we’ve learned through its implementation how much more effective it can make the force.”
Trump signed the Women, Peace, and Security Act in 2017, recognizing the “meaningful participation of women in conflict prevention and conflict resolution processes.” CNN previously reported that Trump’s daughter and former senior adviser, Ivanka, spearheaded the policy. In practice, the WPS Act has helped the US engage with key allies and partners around the globe and “build bridges and connections that are necessary, before a conflict kicks off,” McInnis said.
McInnis added that while WPS started as a United Nations initiative, “that’s not how the US has implemented it.” She pointed back to the support from Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz in 2017. Indeed, Waltz was the co-chair of the Women, Peace, and Security Caucus as recently as 2023. And Rubio noted in 2019 that women “play a key role” in security.
“If 50% of your population is left out of peace processes and is left out of key leadership and decision making roles, you are setting yourself up for failure,” Rubio said.
Current Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sponsored the bill enacting the initiative when she was a member of the House in 2017.
CNN has asked the Pentagon and White House for comment. A spokesperson for Ivanka Trump did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Kyleanne Hunter, a Marine Corps veteran and national security expert who was previously a senior political scientist at RAND, said WPS has been “an essential lynchpin” for how the US military engages with its allies, and Hegseth’s comments will spark concern over how that work could continue
“I think it shows a real misunderstanding … that this was about putting women in places where women aren’t supposed to be, which is nonsense,” Hunter said. “There’s zero evidence that that has actually happened.”
The program also influenced things like women’s body armor in the military, ensuring they have armor that fits appropriately, she explained. It has ensured women can access the health care they need in the military healthy system, and “that the system takes into account women’s needs and women’s perspectives in the development of personnel policy, equipment, material, all of the things across the spectrum.”
That could be particularly important given the increasingly high rates at which women are joining the military. A 2023 demographics report from the Pentagon showed that the percentage of women joining the enlisted and officer ranks has continued to grow. The 2023 report showed 17.7% of active-duty troops are women, and 21.9% of Reserve service members are women.
Over the last decade, women have been “more and more recruitable.” The WPS program has played a part in influencing everything from the acquisition of aircraft to ensure the cockpits are adequate for female pilots as well as male pilots to the military’s parental leave policy, Hunter said.
Though it’s unclear what practical impact Hegseth’s move will have — it could signal to women considering a role in the military and broader national security apparatus throughout government that they won’t be valued, Hunter said.
“These aren’t woke policies that have harmed anybody,” she said. “This is recognizing that to get a high caliber of warfighters, we need to ensure they’re supported. … If I were an 18- to 26-year-old woman who was considering the military or anything in the national security enterprise as a career field, I’d be taking some really strong second looks right now.”
CNN’s Kit Maher and Betsy Klein contributed.
