Former state Senator Gayle L. Goldin sees the Trump administration’s attempt to eliminate the 105-year-old Women’s Bureau from the US Labor Department as part of a larger effort to keep women out of the workplace.
Goldin, a Providence Democrat who championed abortion rights legislation in Rhode Island, stepped down from her Senate seat in 2021 to join President Joe Biden’s administration as a senior adviser for the Women’s Bureau, and she went on to become the bureau’s deputy director.
Established in 1920, the Women’s Bureau is the only federal agency mandated to represent the needs of wage-earning women, and it helped formulate legislation such as the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, the Equal Pay Act of 1963, and the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993.
But the Labor Department’s budget brief for the next fiscal year proposes eliminating the Women’s Bureau, calling it “an ineffective policy office that is a relic of the past.”
Goldin, who resigned from the Women’s Bureau the day Trump was inaugurated for his second term, is now a senior fellow at The Century Foundation progressive think tank.
“The second Trump administration seems intent on doubling down on patriarchal notions of masculinity and an outdated view of women, taking actions that will set back advancements in the labor force by decades and have disastrous impacts on the economy,” she wrote in a recent essay for the foundation titled ”Ending the Women’s Bureau would be a Step Backward.“
Goldin told the Globe that the attempt to dismantle the bureau is part of a larger attempt to boost birth rates, curtail access to abortion services, and revert to earlier gender roles.
“I think they want women out of the workplace,” Goldin said. “The efforts to suppress women’s bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom while focusing on women as a means of reproduction, without policies that improve lives generally, is a pretty clear message that they want women to stay home and stay out of the workplace.”
She said that contrary to the budget brief, the Women’s Bureau has been “incredibly effective,” operating with a budget of about $23 million while conducting an enormous amount of research and analysis on issues ranging from child care to gender-based violence.
“Unfortunately, Project 2025 sees all of this work as ‘politicized research’ instead of what it is: facts and data that show what it is like to be a woman working in the United States,” she wrote.
Goldin said women of all political parties need paid family and medical leave, safe workplaces, fair pay, and healthy working conditions. And she said she worked at the Women’s Bureau with Republicans on plans for paid family leave programs.
So she hopes a bipartisan group of members of Congress will thwart the Trump administration’s attempt to eliminate the Women’s Bureau.
Goldin, who still lives in Providence, said she is not planning to run for another public office in Rhode Island right now, but she “absolutely would if I think I’m the best person for the position.”
This story first appeared in Rhode Map, our free newsletter about Rhode Island that also contains information about local events, links to interesting stories, and more. If you’d like to receive it via email Monday through Friday, you can sign up here.
Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at edward.fitzpatrick@globe.com. Follow him @FitzProv.