The Trade War’s Collateral Damage Has A Gender

The economic casualties of tariff policy have a face. It’s female.

There is a version of the trade war narrative that talks about factories humming back to life, about blue-collar jobs returning to towns that time forgot, about restoring American manufacturing pride. That version is incomplete. Because while economists debate supply chains and GDP projections, something quieter and potentially far more damaging is happening to women in this economy. And the data is worth examining closely.

According to NBER Working Paper 33792, modeling of the 2025 tariff shock projects that higher tariffs could drive up manufacturing employment while service-sector jobs fall, agricultural jobs decrease and real wages decline. Researchers also project that overall labor force participation drops as a result. These are modeled estimates based on 2024 baseline data, not guaranteed outcomes, and economists continue to debate the magnitude of these effects. But the directional findings are consistent across multiple independent analyses. The trade-off may sound neutral on paper. The distributional impact is anything but.

Women Hold The Jobs Most Exposed To Service-Sector Contraction

Women hold the majority of service-sector jobs in this country. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data tracked by the National Association of Home Builders, women account for roughly 70% of education and health services employment and represent the majority of workers in leisure and hospitality, financial activities and personal care. These are not peripheral parts of the economy. They are the connective tissue. And the industries most exposed to service-sector contraction are the ones where women are most concentrated.

When hotels cut staff, when restaurants close, when retail chains downsize, the workers most affected are disproportionately female. That pattern is consistent with decades of BLS workforce composition data, not a new phenomenon specific to this trade cycle.

Manufacturing Isn’t A Realistic Near-Term Alternative For Most Women

Manufacturing jobs, even the ones policymakers promote tariffs to bring back, skew roughly 71% male according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures and typically tie to facilities and credential pipelines that take years to develop. For most displaced service workers, the manufacturing sector does not represent a realistic near-term alternative, particularly given geographic and skills mismatches in the labor market.

Agricultural Retaliation Hits Vulnerable Women Workers

Agriculture adds another layer. Women in rural and migrant labor communities who work in food processing, crop harvesting and agricultural support are among the more economically vulnerable segments of the workforce.

When foreign governments respond to U.S. tariffs with retaliatory measures, American agricultural exports tend to absorb pressure. Research consistently shows those downstream effects reach workers in communities where alternative employment options are limited.

Wage Erosion Compounds Existing Gender Gaps

Then there is wage erosion. The same NBER model projects U.S. real wages declining roughly 1.4% by 2028 under current tariff trajectories, with labor force participation falling alongside them. For context, BLS data shows women working full time already earn 83 cents for every dollar earned by men.

A reduction in real compensation tends to reduce labor force participation, and research on prior downturns suggests women, particularly those with caregiving responsibilities, exit at higher rates when the calculus shifts. Reentry typically comes at a wage penalty.

Global Research Shows Women Absorb Trade Shocks More Deeply

The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Global Gender Gap Report notes that trade shocks have historically hit women harder and the recovery period tends to be longer, widening gaps in earnings, assets and long-term wealth that predate any single policy cycle. The report estimates that a 1% contraction in global trade volumes could put nearly 4.5 million female jobs at risk globally. It also notes that these dynamics are more pronounced in lower-income economies, though the structural concentration of women in service-sector roles makes high-income economies like the United States similarly exposed in specific ways.

Trade policy tends to get debated in the language of industries, sectors and geopolitical strategy. The distributional question of which workers absorb the cost of sectoral shifts receives less systematic attention. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, sectors with higher import exposure saw the sharpest declines in hiring in 2025, though researchers note considerable uncertainty remains about the full magnitude of tariff-driven employment effects. Those import-exposed and service-adjacent sectors are where women are most concentrated in the workforce.

Women Built Economic Footing in Services — Now That Sector Is Under Pressure

Women have built significant economic footing in the service economy over decades, driven in part by the sector’s relative accessibility, scheduling flexibility and lower credentialing barriers compared to manufacturing. That sector now absorbs external pressure it did not generate. Whether policymakers choose to treat that as a relevant distributional concern is a policy decision, and the data exists to inform it.