Last week brought devastating news to Chicago Women in Trades (CWIT) and workers across America: the Trump administration gutted the Women’s Bureau, the only federal office standing up for women in the workplace. Created by Congress over 100 years ago, this agency is dedicated to ensuring women can earn a living wage and work safely. With staff removed and grant programs cut, this office can no longer do what it was designed to do: help women build careers that provide economic security for them and their families.

Through Democratic and Republican administrations, the Women’s Bureau has been the voice for working women. From analyzing occupational segregation and the gender pay gap to collecting data on childcare access and family leave to increasing public understanding of workplace sexual harassment and the impacts of domestic violence at work, the agency has been an inimitable champion for women’s economic empowerment. Despite being a small agency, it has had an outsized impact; its paid leave grants and research have helped 14 states create paid family leave laws.

The agency has also been a strong advocate for tradeswomen. In 1992, bipartisan legislation created the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) Act, which provided grants to increase women’s participation in high-wage careers like construction and manufacturing. This crucial legislation helped CWIT and other organizations across the country prepare thousands of women to enter and succeed in male-dominated, high-skilled, high-earning career pathways such as construction and manufacturing, and provide training and guidance for industry partners to support inclusive and equitable workplaces.

CWIT was instrumental in this effort – advocating for the initial legislation, protecting the grants over the past 30 years, and fighting to increase funding for the highly successful program – which only received $6 million in funds in 2024 despite being the only federal program dedicated to increasing women’s access to high wage nontraditional careers.

In the early days of the program, WANTO funded a CWIT-led worksite equity initiative that resulted in a significant increase in women working—a nearly fivefold increase sitewide—and enabled us to provide on-site training and support on topics such as safety and health issues for tradeswomen, sexual harassment prevention, and integration of women into male-dominated crews.

CWIT’s WANTO grant has also supported local pre-apprenticeship training to prepare women to enter the construction trades. Over the last two-year grant period (2023-2024), WANTO significantly contributed to the enrollment of nearly 400 women in pre-apprenticeship training, 80% of whom completed the program. In the last six years, the Women’s Bureau has helped over 12,000 women receive training and retention services to succeed in apprenticeship and other nontraditional fields.

According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, the number of women in construction has grown by nearly 30% between 2018 and 2023. This is the direct result of programs like WANTO, which have broken down barriers that have kept women out of these jobs for generations.

Last week, the administration terminated all WANTO grants despite their congressional mandate, with only the Chicago Women in Trades’ grant protected by court order. FARE grants supporting women’s workplace rights were also canceled.

These cuts will likely force organizations nationwide to lay off staff and cancel imminent training programs, and destabilize the Women’s Bureau.

As the ranking member of the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) said to Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer during the Department of Labor budget hearing on May 15, 2025, “You canceled more than two dozen Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) grants that support women in trades like construction, manufacturing, and information technology. These are some of the most in-demand jobs in communities nationwide, and yet women make up less than 25 percent of the workforce in those sectors.

“Madam Secretary, this administration is recklessly and unlawfully freezing and stealing congressionally-appropriated funds from agencies, programs, and services across the government that serve the American people. The Congress holds the power of the purse. It is in the Constitution. Article I, Section 9, Clause 7.”

Congress created and funded these programs because they work. After 100 years of progress, we cannot allow this essential work to vanish. It’s time for Congress to restore what was never the administration’s to eliminate.

You can help. Take action now and tell Congress to support the Women’s Bureau, its critical work, and its vital funding.