Economic security for women with disabilities has long been fragile, shaped by systems that were never designed to support them. These systems are complex, fragmented and under sustained attack. More than a year into his second term, President Trump has begun dismantling them. His administration has eliminated advisory bodies, halted federal data initiatives, weakened civil rights enforcement, and reduced oversight and investment in education and workforce systems. These actions are not abstract. They undermine economic security for women with disabilities by making it harder for them to enter, stay in and advance in the workforce.
Too many workplaces still operate on an outdated model of a worker with no caregiving responsibilities and unlimited availability. Women with disabilities navigate those expectations alongside inaccessible environments, inflexible schedules and uneven enforcement of basic protections. Public policies governing employment, health care and income support add another layer of complexity, requiring people with disabilities to navigate burdensome rules just to maintain stability, with particularly acute impacts on women.
Recent employment data underscore how precarious disabled women’s progress has been. Unemployment is rising for Black and Asian disabled workers, while overall unemployment for disabled workers remains roughly double that of nondisabled workers. Employment levels also remain low – just 22.8 percent of disabled people were employed in 2025, compared to 65 percent of nondisabled people. Together, these trends point to a labor market that continues to exclude disabled workers, particularly workers of color.
In addition to experiencing lower employment rates, lower wages and lower poverty rates than nondisabled women, women of color with disabilities experience even sharper disparities. For Black, Latina, Indigenous and Asian American women with disabilities, barriers compound across race, gender and disability, shaping not only whether work is accessible, but whether it is sustainable. Data that has been summarized often mask these differences, but disaggregated trends, broken down into detailed subcategories show clearly where progress has stalled or begun to reverse.
Federal investments in workforce development and education have helped build pathways into employment by connecting workers to training, skills and jobs. Civil rights enforcement has helped ensure those pathways are accessible to people with disabilities, though uneven enforcement continues to limit who can fully benefit. These investments are now under significant strain due to funding cuts, agency restructuring and reduced federal capacity.
Women with disabilities face an increasingly uncertain economic future as these changes take hold. What’s at stake is not just a set of programs, but the systems that make economic participation possible. In the months ahead, we will publish a new disability economic justice series examining what has shifted under this new administration, what that shift means for women with disabilities and what must be rebuilt to support long-term economic security.
Series Roadmap
The first installment in our new series will focus on federal data infrastructure. Federal data systems have made it possible to track disparities in employment, wages and labor force participation through long-standing federal surveys and coordinated research efforts. The Trump administration has targeted advisory bodies, shifted or eliminated research priorities, initiated broadscale staffing reductions and placed constraints on federal data collection. Together, these actions limit what we can see and reduce the resources needed to assess how women with disabilities are faring over time.
The second installment will examine education and workforce development systems and the role they play in connecting people to employment. These include postsecondary education, vocational rehabilitation and workforce programs. Federal investments have helped build pathways into employment, but the Trump administration has cut funding, reduced staffing, and weakened oversight across key programs. Ongoing uncertainty about the future of the Department of Education, including key programs like the Rehabilitation Services Administration and proposals to move them to the Department of Labor or other agencies puts this system at risk. It threatens the infrastructure that prepares students with disabilities to transition into the workforce and sustain access to training and employment over time. Together, these actions disrupt pathways into employment and make it harder for women with disabilities to enter and remain in the workforce.
The third installment will examine civil rights enforcement and its role in ensuring access to employment and fair treatment in the workplace. Persistent disparities in employment reflect not only gaps in access, but ongoing discrimination and uneven enforcement of workplace protections. Federal civil rights laws establish a framework for equal opportunity, but they depend on active enforcement to be meaningful. The Trump administration has narrowed enforcement priorities and pulled back from investigating systemic discrimination, including threatening key types of claims and shifting focus away from longstanding areas of civil rights enforcement. These actions weaken the federal government’s capacity to investigate discrimination and ensure compliance under laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act. Disabled workers navigating hiring, pay and workplace treatment pay the price. Reduced enforcement capacity leaves women with disabilities more exposed to discrimination and less likely to see it addressed.
The final installment will focus on what it will take to rebuild. Disparities in employment and economic outcomes are not incidental. They reflect policy choices and sustained underinvestment in systems that support disabled job seekers and workers. Research underscores that economic inequality for disabled workers persists even during periods of economic growth, highlighting the need for structural solutions rather than incremental fixes. Rebuilding will require restoring federal capacity, strengthening enforcement and reestablishing the systems that support education, training, and employment. It will also require a more deliberate approach to policy design – one that accounts for how disability, race and gender shape access to opportunity from the start, alongside other factors that influence how people experience and move through these systems. Most importantly, people with disabilities – particularly those most harmed by these policies – must be at the center of leading this work.
