Women are working despite the odds, including unequal pay, unpredictable low-wage jobs, and few or no benefits. Yet instead of pushing for policies that would close those gaps, Congress has passed legislation that threatens to dismantle the very programs that help women work, care for their families, and stay afloat.
The recently passed reconciliation law—dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBA) by its backers—adds harsh new work requirements to SNAP and Medicaid. The result? Millions of working women, mothers, single moms, and grandmothers could lose access to food assistance and health coverage, not because they don’t work hard enough, but because of rigid rules that ignore the realities of women’s lives.
Women are working despite the odds
Today, women are working more than ever. Labor force participation rates among working-age women are near record highs. Even with this progress, women’s labor force participation has not caught up with men’s, in large part due to structural barriers to work. Among women not in the workforce, caregiving responsibilities remain the largest road block.
Work supports are government and employer policies and programs that help women stay employed and move up, such as affordable child care, predictable work schedules, and access to food assistance and health care. Without work supports, even small setbacks — a sick child, a cut in hours, or rising care costs — can push women out of the workforce or force them into lower-paying, less stable jobs.
When child care costs more than a paycheck, when a job cuts hours without notice, or when illness strikes and there’s no paid sick time, women are often forced to scale back to part-time work or drop out of the workforce altogether. These aren’t choices women want to make. They are the result of an economy that doesn’t account for unpredictable low-wage jobs, caregiving, and rising costs. Over time, these disruptions reduce women’s current income and hurt their long-term financial security.
The new law imposes big ugly paperwork burdens on women who are already working
OBBA amounts to one of the largest transfers of resources from low-income families to the wealthy in history, and it will hit women and children the hardest. OBBA cuts critical work supports like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Medicaid, and calls the cuts “savings” of federal spending. These aren’t real savings. OBBA labels burdensome paperwork with the misnomer of “work requirements,” which will force eligible people out of these programs—not because they aren’t working, but because it’s too burdensome to prove that they are. At the end of the day, it’s women—especially mothers, single mothers, and women of color—who will feel the sharpest impact when these vital supports are stripped away, pushing them further from economic security they have worked hard to build.
SNAP helps women work & keep food on the table
SNAP is one of the most successful federal interventions for reducing food insecurity and poverty, particularly for women. Women account for approximately 55 percent of the non-elderly adults who receive SNAP, and single mothers head nearly two-thirds of SNAP households with children. Among the 12 million women (ages 18-64) who participated in SNAP in 2023, the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality (GCPI) estimates that 71 percent worked at some point during the year.1
GCPI estimates that about 2 million more women will be newly subject to work requirements due to the OBBA changes. Here are the facts:
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- Prior to OBBA, able-bodied adults ages 18 to 54 without dependents were already required to work at least 80 hours a month to claim SNAP benefits.
- OBBA extends this work requirement in SNAP to 55 to 64-year-olds with no dependents, and to 18 to 54-year-olds with dependents who are 14 to 17 years old.
- Out of the 2 million women newly subject to SNAP work requirements, about half are women in households with children ages 14 to 17. These 2 million women live with 3.5 million other people in their households, including 1 million children.
- Among the 1 million women participating in SNAP who live with a 14 to 17-year-old, 73 percent worked at some point in 2023, and over half (52 percent) usually worked at least 20 hours per week for at least 11 months.
The two million women who GCPI estimates will be newly subject to work requirements in SNAP will face burdensome new paperwork and reporting requirements. Older women and women in low-paid, part-time, or unstable jobs where hours fluctuate and documentation is difficult to obtain will be hit particularly hard. We know from previous research that work requirements for SNAP do not increase employment, but documentation hurdles often cause eligible families to lose benefits. They lose access to basic needs programs not because they are ineligible, but because the process is confusing, time-consuming, and usually deeply discouraging. For women already dealing with unpredictable work and caregiving responsibilities, adding reporting requirements will only make it harder to get the nutritional support they need to keep themselves and their families fed and healthy.
Medicaid supports women’s health so they can thrive at work & at home
Medicaid provides vital support to millions of women. GCPI estimates that 15 million women (ages 19 to 64) participated in Medicaid in 2023, including 9 million women in households with children. Prior research shows that nearly two-thirds of Medicaid recipients are already working. Caregiving is the most common reason cited by the minority of people with Medicaid who aren’t working. As Medicaid is stripped away, women with children will have less support to care for young, disabled, or sick loved ones and ultimately be left without support to maintain consistent work.
Out of the 15 million women (ages 19 to 64) who participated in Medicaid in 2023, GCPI estimates that about 6 million (42 percent) will be subject to a new OBBA work requirement. Here are the facts about the 6 million women facing new work requirements:
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- One million live with children ages 14-17 and 5 million women have no children in the household.
- 68 percent worked in 2023, with 42 percent usually working 20 or more hours per week for at least 11 months of the year.
All six million women are at risk of losing their Medicaid coverage. Many individuals who lost Medicaid coverage in Arkansas after the implementation of work requirements were in fact working or met exemption criteria, but lost their health care due to administrative hurdles and reporting failures. Arkansas’ work requirement experience in 2018-2019 demonstrated that adding work requirements to Medicaid is a policy failure: employment will not increase and people will lose health coverage.
Additional work reporting requirements don’t work for working women
The draconian cuts in OBBA treat poverty as a matter of individual failure, rather than the policy failure it is. It assumes women can simply work more hours if they try harder, ignoring that many low-wage jobs don’t offer full-time hours, and that child care costs can eat up most of a paycheck. The legislation fails to acknowledge that unpaid labor performed mostly by women is critical to stability in families and communities across the country. The impact will be predictable and devastating: more women pushed out of the workforce, more children going hungry, and entire families slipping further away from the stability we have fought to build.
1. GCPI analysis of U.S. Census Bureau’s 2023 American Community Survey (ACS). We exclude from our analysis of both SNAP and Medicaid women who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), are covered by Medicare or have a veteran service-connected disability rating of 70-100 percent because they should not be subject to work requirements due to their documented disability.