Number of women in top national security roles falls under Trump

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Olivia Gazis

Olivia Gazis covers intelligence and international security matters for CBS News. Twice Emmy-nominated, she has traveled worldwide with the secretary of state and contributes reporting on intelligence, foreign policy and other security topics across CBS News broadcast, radio, online and streaming platforms.

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October 30, 2026 / 9:00 AM EDT / CBS News

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Washington — President Trump's second administration has overseen a steep decline in the number of women serving in senior U.S. diplomatic and national security posts and dismantled programs supporting women overseas, including initiatives the president championed during his first term, according to a new report by Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Commissioned by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the committee's top Democrat, the report describes a systematic reversal of policies Mr. Trump once supported, warning that the changes may be weakening American influence abroad and putting women's lives at risk.  

"Supporting women and girls is not separate from advancing American interests — it is how we prevent conflict, strengthen our partners and compete," Shaheen said in a statement to CBS News. "This report documents the devastating consequences of the Administration's actions and makes clear the impact on America's national security."

Within the Trump administration, women now hold just 17.4% of Cabinet and Cabinet-level positions, compared with 52% during the Biden administration, according to the report. At the Pentagon, only eight of 201 candidates for senior military posts this year were women — about 4%, less than half the average share over the previous decade. No women currently serve as active-duty four-star officers. 

Women have also lost ground within the senior diplomatic corps. Nearly half of Senate-confirmed U.S. ambassadors were women when Mr. Trump took office in 2025, but fewer than 25 diplomatic missions worldwide are currently led by female ambassadors, the analysis found. (Those figures use different measures and come amid widespread vacancies, with 93 of 196 ambassadorships unfilled, according to the American Foreign Service Association.)

Figures in the report also show that women account for just 35, or 17%, of the 206 Trump nominees for State Department positions to date, a figure that was 26% during the same period of the first Trump administration. During the Biden administration's first two years, nearly half — 113 of 245 State Department nominees — were women. 

White House spokesperson Olivia Wales defended the current administration in a statement: "President Trump is a champion for women and moms across this country." 

Mr. Trump's domestic policies, according to a White House official, include signing his "Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports" executive order, expanding the child tax credit, creating the Trump Accounts child savings program and recently standing up the White House Women's Health Task Force to help women receive high-quality healthcare. 

Across the current administration, there are many women in senior positions, including Susie Wiles, who is the first female chief of staff in history, as well as Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, CDC Director Erica Schwartz, Surgeon General Nicole Saphier and FDA Commissioner Heidi Overton, the official said. 

State Department principal deputy spokeswoman Paloma Chacon also defended the administration's record, saying Mr. Trump had appointed women to senior diplomatic and departmental leadership positions. She said the department had ended what it considers discriminatory diversity, equity and inclusion hiring practices and was prioritizing merit in Foreign Service appointments.

The report's findings stand in contrast to Mr. Trump's first term, when he and senior officials from his administration backed several initiatives promoting women's development and economic opportunities. 

During his first administration, Mr. Trump launched a global women's economic development initiative in 2019 spearheaded by his daughter and then-senior adviser Ivanka Trump, with the goal of improving economic opportunities for 50 million women in developing countries by 2025. 

During his second term, however, the administration has eliminated the offices responsible for advancing those policies, canceled aid and assistance programs, and curtailed the implementation of legislation Mr. Trump himself signed.

In 2017, Mr. Trump signed the bipartisan Women, Peace and Security Act, or WPS, which required the federal government to craft a strategy to bolster women's participation in conflict prevention, peace and postwar efforts. 

Then-Sen. Marco Rubio was a co-sponsor of the law, and he praised it in April 2025 as secretary of state, telling an audience at the State Department's International Women of Courage Awards ceremony that he was "very proud" to have supported it. (The State Department did not hold the ceremony this year, in what marks the first interruption since it was established in 2007 by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.) 

The WPS Act required Defense Department participation, but Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on X in 2025 that he had "ENDED" the program inside the Pentagon. 

He called the program "another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops." In a follow-up post, Hegseth claimed the Biden administration had "distorted & weaponized" the initiative after it launched. 

According to a Democratic congressional aide, there are minimum statutory requirements mandated by Congress, including training military personnel, implementing a government-wide strategy and participating in congressional oversight. 

In a statement, Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson pointed to Hegseth's recent speech in Quantico, Virginia, where he said Black and female recruitment are up. She said the military is "more ready, lethal, and healthy than ever before, remaining colorblind, gender-neutral, and merit-based as you should be." 

"Implementing the Secretary's initiatives under President Trump's leadership has allowed women to thrive at the War Department, and the surge in recruitment is proof of that," Wilson said. 

The statement did not address questions about the Women, Peace and Security strategy. The Democrats said the administration across the departments has not yet utilized the $112 million Congress passed for implementing the WPS strategy for fiscal year 2026. 

The Trump administration's cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development also "uniquely impacted women and girls," according to the report, because they ended programs for maternal and child health, nutrition, basic education, family planning, the reduction of early child marriage and gender-based violence.

The administration terminated 86% of USAID awards involving maternal and child health, potentially disrupting care for as many as 16.8 million pregnant women annually, the Democratic report found. In Afghanistan alone, roughly 800 health clinics have closed following U.S. cuts, with the U.N. projecting 1,200 additional maternal deaths by 2028. 

A senior State Department official defended the foreign assistance overhaul, saying the administration was shifting toward locally managed health programs and measuring outcomes rather than the volume of services funded, adding the United States remains the world's largest global health funder. 

On Afghanistan, the official said the administration had suspended assistance that could reach the Taliban, citing the group's restrictions on women and girls and concerns about U.S. funding benefiting the regime. 

Rubio and other senior officials have argued that the sweeping reorganization of the State Department, including the dismantling of USAID, was necessary to reduce waste and align foreign assistance programs with U.S. interests.

In a prior defense of the elimination of the Office of Global Women's Issues at the department, Rubio told lawmakers in May 2025 that "we're not abandoning women's issues," and that the functions of the office would be transferred to regional bureaus. 

But the Democratic aide told CBS News that State Department officials have since been unable to explain how that transfer was working in practice, noting officials from regional bureaus have not been able to identify who was responsible for implementing women's initiatives.

A senior State Department official said regional teams were overseeing foreign assistance programs, including those benefiting women and children, but did not identify who had assumed responsibility for the functions Rubio pledged to preserve.