The social and economic policy implications of Trump’s version of protective masculinity are becoming more apparent by the day. Trump has now pledged to be the strong male leader who ‘protects’ Americans from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) ‘discrimination’.
Trump’s protection involved signing an Executive Order overturning a DEI order originally signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965 that was actually designed to combat federal contractors discriminating in employment on the basis of race and ethnicity. Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 was subsequently amended by President Obama to include issues of gender, gender identity and sexual orientation. The Trump administration has also ordered the sacking of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion staff.
Much has been made of the class implications of the economic changes that Trump will introduce. Commentator George Monbiot argues that ‘seldom in recent history has class war been waged so blatantly’ as Elon Musk and other billionaires he has recruited for the Musk-headed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ‘will lead the federal assault on the middle and working classes: seeking to slash public spending and the public protections defending people from predatory capital’.
The line-up of billionaires at Trump’s inauguration was also a sign of things to come. Tech chiefs such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook and Roivant Sciences’ Vivek Ramaswamy were particularly favoured, along with Musk.
However, as Trump’s new measures show, the economic issues at stake in his regime go far beyond class. The overturning of Executive Order 11246 has broader employment equity implications for all industries that deal with the US federal government. The implications for the current and future tech economy are particularly evident, especially given the Trump administration’s focus on facilitating competition with China in fields such as Artificial Intelligence.
As Mackenzie and Wajcman pointed out many years ago, technological development is socially shaped. We already know that there are gender and racial biases in currently developed Artificial Intelligence, as in science and technology more generally.
However, Trump does not acknowledge existing inequalities. He claims that by removing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) requirements, he is actually combatting discrimination and replacing them with merit-based criteria. Instead, he is likely to exacerbate and reinforce existing inequalities, given that DEI measures were introduced precisely because notions of ‘merit’ had previously often been conceived, whether intentionally or unintentionally, in gendered and racialised ways.
So at a time of major technological change, Trump is facilitating a discriminatory economy by removing government measures, here and elsewhere, that are designed to make the economy more equitable and inclusive. Trump’s measures will protect his socially conservative, white, male, heterosexual, cisgender base from employment competition but many others who voted for him are likely to be negatively impacted.
Gender is particularly important here (along with intersecting issues of race and class). This is not surprising given that Trump’s election strategy included mobilising the votes of techno bros and the youthful, misogynistic ‘manosphere’. The Harris campaign’s attempts to promote alternative, more progressive versions of masculinity were not electorally successful. Trump’s insistence that there are only two, biologically based genders will discriminate against transgender and intersex Americans. However, those he does recognise as women will also be discriminated against.
As the third industrial revolution morphs into the fourth, it is worth reflecting on some of the racial and gendered history of the first industrial revolution. The first industrial revolution in England, involving steam-power technology being used in the mass manufacture of cotton, was not only built on the backs of the white working class; it was also built on slavery and both the appropriation and destruction of the Indian cotton industry. Significantly, the first Industrial Revolution also initially largely employed women given that tasks such as spinning textiles had traditionally been female work.
Indeed, Frederick Engels wrote of how, in towns such as Manchester, frequently, ‘the wife supports the family, the husband sits at home, tends the children, sweeps the room and cooks’. While Engels went on to note that the previous rule of the husband over the wife had also been concerning, that was not the general view. In fact, sections of male labour joined with male capital in the 19th century to try to exclude women from the workplace and to introduce the model of a heterosexual, male breadwinner head of household.
However, that model of capitalism came under increasing challenge in the 20th and 21st century as social movements around gender, sexuality and race mobilised for political, social and economic inclusion.
Under Trump, we are now seeing attempts not only to resist social change but to shape the future US economy in a way that can exacerbate the existing marginalisation of women along with ethnic, racial and sexual minorities. As well as the misogynistic denizens of the ‘manosphere’, powerful billionaire techbros seem to be increasingly mobilising around a gendered Trumpist worldview. Elon Musk has long had questionable positions on gender equality and on transgender issues. Mark Zuckerberg recently proclaimed that he would restore the ‘masculine energy’ in corporate life that he claimed had been ‘neutered’ in recent times. This is despite the existing masculine dominance in the tech sector. Meanwhile, many major US companies in all fields are moving away from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives.
These developments are all the more concerning because China, the US’s major economic rival that is also influencing the world economy, has such an appalling record in regard to the rights of women, feminists and LGBTIQ+ activists and ethnic minorities.
In short, we are at a crucial juncture for socially shaping the future economy and its technological aspects in particular. The history of the First Industrial Revolution demonstrates how the forces not just of capital but of race and gender in a powerful country can shape the world economy in exclusionary ways for generations to come. There is now an even greater risk that the same will happen to the economic and technological transformations taking place in the 21st century.
Carol Johnson is an Emerita Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of Adelaide.
Feeling protected: protective masculinity and femininity from Donald Trump and Joe Biden to Jacinda Ardern by Carol Johnson is available to read in Emotions and Society on Bristol University Press Digital here.
Image credit: A Disappearing Act via Flickr