Donald Trump has probably been briefed by his political team on the ongoing gender gap in American politics. In the latest Pew Research Center poll, for example, the president’s approval rating among men was 33%, but among women it was down to 26%. The same survey found that in the midterm elections, Democrats and Republicans were tied among men, but women plan to vote Democratic — by a 14-point margin.

With just two weeks remaining in the midterm election cycle, the White House took a modest step toward addressing this problem, though the move was not without flaw.

On Monday morning, the president signed an executive order creating a Women’s Health Division at the National Institutes of Health, which will apparently work alongside a new White House Women’s Health Task Force. According to Trump, the idea was pushed by his wife, first lady Melania Trump, who delivered rare public remarks to the kickoff event.

“Beginning today, we will change the reality of women’s health,” she said. “Previous generations fought for women’s rights. Our generation will fight to discover the cures that will ensure a woman can live her life in health and to the fullest.”

On the surface, the initiative seems entirely worthwhile, but a closer look reveals some notable points of concern.

The leadership: The White House’s task force will be co-chaired by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is wildly unqualified for such a role, and whose disengagement from governing reinforces impressions that this initiative is largely for show.

The resources: While the objective behind the initiative has merit, what’s needed are real investments in scientific research, and Trump’s executive order neither allocated any funds nor included any funding goals.

The redundancy: The idea of creating an office at the NIH specifically focused on women’s health sounds great, but Team Trump didn’t come up with the idea: The NIH has had an Office of Research on Women’s Health for 36 years.

A Washington Post report added, “Trump’s initiative resembles past administrations’ activities. Then-first lady Jill Biden pursued similar efforts to jump-start women’s health research, and Biden officials in November 2023 launched their own White House effort intended to coordinate a cross-government response to boost women’s health.”

The record: It’s good to see the Republican administration take women’s health research seriously, but this appears to be a relatively new priority. As The New York Times reported, it was just last year when Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services, under Kennedy’s leadership, tried to “slash funding for the Women’s Health Initiative, a long-running, taxpayer-funded study of a broad range of women’s health issues that began in the 1990s.”

The rollout: While the president had a seemingly straightforward objective when announcing the initiative, he predictably strayed from his prepared text and started talking about, among other things, how impressed he was with his renovation decisions, the replacement of the White House Rose Garden, the cushions he had “specially made” for White House patio seats and his concerns related to damage to women’s shoes.

Under the circumstances, it’s probably best to keep expectations low as the White House’s efforts on this issue get underway.

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