By slashing billions from food assistance while expanding harsh work rules, Republicans are deliberately targeting women—especially single mothers—who rely on SNAP to keep their families fed.
For those of us who spend our lives advocating for social justice in our country, we’re used to disappointment.
For those, like me, who have made the rights and needs of women and girls an essential part of our advocacy, that disappointment is what we’ve come to expect from today’s policymakers. Time and time again, we’ve seen elected officials on both sides of the aisle trade away the basic rights and needs of everyday Americans—women and girls, in particular—for political or economic expediency.
So it wasn’t a surprise to see congressional Republicans again approach this year’s budget reconciliation process not only as a chance to target the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid and other critical basic needs programs, but specifically to attack women, and to erase their presence and undermine their power in our society. Their budget priorities speak loudly and clearly to the women and girls of our country: The goal here is to cement and deepen a status quo where men (specifically, cisgender white men) have access to opportunity and advancement, and women and girls revert to subservience.
Targeting Women by Design
The last few months in Washington, D.C., have been consumed with political theatrics around the budget reconciliation process. Republicans in the House and Senate scrambled to pass legislation that will cut $184 billion from SNAP through 2034—by far the largest cut to SNAP in the program’s history—to finance tax cuts for the wealthy big businesses. They also hope to increase funding for pursuit of immigrants.
This extremist budget will drive millions of people into poverty and hunger. It also represents a full-throated assault on women—particularly single mothers, for whom SNAP has been a lifeline.
Crafting a budget is about making choices and weighing priorities. This bill shows us that Republicans in the federal government—the House, the Senate and the Trump administration—are choosing to devalue the lives of women and their children.
The numbers are stark. Over 41 million people nationwide from nearly 22.5 million households received SNAP benefits each month marking one out of every eight people.
Regardless of the strides we have made towards gender equity in this country, women and girls continue to be significantly more vulnerable than their male counterparts when it comes to poverty and hunger. The most recent figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) show that a staggering 35 percent of households headed by a single mother struggle with food insecurity. It doesn’t take a policy expert to understand these households often face unique barriers to assistance like employment discrimination caregiving responsibilities and the long-term effects of the wage gap, to name a few.
Meanwhile, tax cuts for the wealthy will largely benefit men, who also hold most of the wealth in this country. Tax cuts for corporations will benefit men, who dominate ownership of these institutions. Increases in military spending and border enforcement will benefit male-dominated roles in American society (not to mention the needless horrors of violence they will force upon so many).
Make no mistake, an attack on SNAP is an attack on women.
Punishing Poverty in the Name of Work
On top of drastic cuts to SNAP the budget reconciliation bill also expands SNAP’s already cruel and burdensome work requirements, which have been proven time and time again to be ineffective. These requirements are actually time limits on SNAP, because unless you can prove you are working 80 hours a month, you will be cut off the program after three months—and then denied access for the following three years!
Cutting SNAP creates more stress for food pantries and charitable organizations which already are stretched thin. Losing benefits does not help someone find a job; it just makes them hungrier while they look for employment.
And yet, Congress chose to attack seniors and parents by increasing the age of those subject to SNAP’s work requirements from 54 to now 64 plus narrowing the definition of “dependent” from age 18 to 14. In fact, Republicans in the House originally tried to impose this time limit on parents with children age 7 and under.
Stunningly, there was one exception: If you are married, you would not be subject to the work requirement, provided your spouse works. There is no logic, no policy reason, no justification for this, except to punish single mothers—for whom juggling work, school and childrearing is logistically, financially and emotionally draining. This is precisely why they need SNAP in the first place—unless your goal is to punish poverty, and especially to punish women for raising children alone.
None of this is an accident. The point is to drive people off SNAP, or there would be no “savings.”
Even the suggestion of dropping the age of dependence from 18 to 7—from college to elementary school—is nothing less than mind-bending for most parents. But sadly, it’s perfectly in line with most congressional Republicans’ approach to policymaking, where the real lives of women have always been ignored.
There is a determined refusal to understand real life, with this fantasy that you, as an employee, are able to call the shots about when and where you’re going to be at work.
What happens when a single mother now must add another job to fulfill these work requirements and now can’t be there to pick up her child from school, especially when aftercare programs are at such an extreme premium?
Losing benefits does not help someone find a job; it just makes them hungrier while they look for employment.
A New Level of Misogyny
With no flexibility or understanding of where women, especially single mothers work, we know what the result will be: They simply will not be able to access SNAP or other basic needs programs. But of course, this is just another brick in the wall that Republicans want to build around women in this country.
Want to go to work and put your kids in childcare? You must be a bad mom who wants to offload your parenting onto someone else.
Want to stay home to take care of your children? Guess you’re just a freeloader who wants hardworking American taxpayers to subsidize your lavish lifestyle.
But when it comes to the attacks on women and single mothers, none of this is anything new. Thanks to historical and systemic discrimination against women, we are one of the populations most at risk from these devastating cuts.
Not only has there been little to no support of working mothers throughout our nation’s history, but there is an active and terrifying movement today to force women out of the workforce altogether. The White House is explicitly advocating for policies to keep parents (and let’s be real, they mean mothers) at home with their children, JD Vance is attacking childless women as being “anti-family” and “cat ladies,” and the president is running around promoting himself as the “fertilization president,” something that just sounds worse and worse the more you think about it.
And of course, this doesn’t stop with mothers. After all, according to Vance, the entire point of the “postmenopausal female” (or, you know, older women) is to stay home and care for their grandchildren.
All of this willfully ignores the reality that in 2024, 74 percent of mothers with children under 18 were working. According to the Department of Labor, more and more women have entered the workforce for decades now, with trends projected to continue up. The policies and proposals coming out of this administration are trying to impose some false utopian vision that has simply never existed in this country. They say they want to restore some glory days from the 1950s, but there has never been a world where women happily kept the home while men marched off to the office.
The Republicans’ decision to destroy SNAP as we know it will drive more people into poverty and be utterly devastating for women, especially single mothers who depend on these basic needs programs to survive. It is frighteningly reactionary and has no consideration or support for anyone who is not a straight, white man.
The Fight Ahead, Rooted in Values
My advocacy work on behalf of women and other vulnerable groups in need has always been driven by my values and my faith. And my Jewish values are clear—we don’t stand by when others are suffering. It is a tragedy that so many elected officials on the Republican side of the aisle have let their own values and beliefs be so deeply perverted as to put their own wallets and their donors’ pocketbooks ahead of those in need, to the point where they will actively, willingly, let millions of their constituents go hungry.
But no matter how dark this moment feels, I can promise this: We will let our own values guide us to continue the fight now and far into the future. Together, we will build a future where no one is forced to endure the pain and indignity of hunger—and where the humanity of women and all people is finally honored.
