Buried among his many day-one executive orders was a declaration by newly sworn in president Donald Trump that there are two sexes, male and female, dictated by genitalia at birth.

This, in the order’s words, is the “biological reality of sex.” The target of this order is ostensibly small and meaningless to most people; just 1.6% of the population identifies as transgender or nonbinary.

That modest fraction will no doubt suffer under this order. But the full effect will be sweeping and potentially devastating for the roughly 49% of the population that identify as cis women.

Indeed, economists can offer a clear yet sad roadmap of the order’s effect: an increase in physical and sexual abuse of cis women.

Never mind bathrooms, diversity, equity and inclusion, culture wars and everything else that the notion of transwomen tends to evoke. The real issue is power. More specifically, the power to define what a woman is and determine who meets that definition. Economists have established that when power shifts from women to men, women’s physical safety is jeopardized.

Between 1969 and 1985, states fundamentally changed how marriages can legally dissolve through the introduction of unilateral divorce.(1) This move granted women the power to leave a marriage, something that was previously difficult if not impossible. Economists attribute to this change a 10% decline in women murdered by their partners, a 30% slide in domestic violence and an 8% to 16% drop in female suicide.

Contrast that with obstacles that reduce the power of women, such as access to abortions. Even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, states had enacted restrictions that made it hard to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

Then consider that as a level set, homicide is the leading cause of death among pregnant women in the U.S. Homicide, which is easy to measure because it shows up in official records, is the most severe manifestation of a broader and more commonly experienced effect of lost power.

A team of health economists found that mandatory waiting periods, which require women to make two visits to a clinic before terminating a pregnancy, increases intimate partner violence. Another team of economists and epidemiologists found that TRAP laws, or the targeted regulation of abortion providers, increase homicide from intimate partner violence by about 3%. (The Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade is too new to have reliable data on its impact.)

In economics, power and bargaining are as important topics as prices and markets, but with a much broader reach. Any transaction can be viewed through the lens of power and bargaining, but so can any relationship. The ability to divorce, the ability to get an abortion — they redistribute bargaining power in a partnership. Women — whether consciously or subconsciously — use that increase in bargaining power to improve their physical safety.

In a similar vein, establishing a restrictive definition of what being a woman is shifts power to men. And one that focuses on genitalia is arguably the most dangerous piece of leverage. Who checks that a girl meets the definition? When do they check? How do they check?

Accounting for the effect of this definition is a matter of cataloging the relationships in which this redistributes bargaining power, a scope much broader than trans and nonbinary people.

Consider the relationship between female athletes and their coaches. This relationship is built on power imbalance, and is already vulnerable to abuse, even for the most powerful women in sports. Coaches are gatekeepers, controlling playing time in professional leagues and often controlling access to college recruiters and professional scouts in youth leagues. It’s all leverage to hold over girls who are desperate to make it to the next level, and abusers take advantage of leverage.

Professional women soccer players in the U.S. are among the most powerful and famous female athletes in the world, and even they are not immune. In 2021, the National Women’s Soccer League was rocked with scandals. Players, long wary of losing their ability to play professionally if they spoke up, began coming forward and detailing the abuse they had suffered under various coaches.

Two different independent investigations revealed that sexual, physical, emotional and verbal abuse from coaches in the professional league was common and unchecked. Lifetime bans were handed down and the league commissioner resigned.

After all that, Trump wants to now subject these players to genitalia checks?

Female athletes illustrate how an exclusive definition of women will redistribute power within a bargaining relationship to a woman’s peril. And while they might be the most severely affected of cis women, they are not the only women who will be affected.

Men hold power over women in all kinds of settings, from doctors and their patients, school principals and their teachers, university professors over their students, supervisors over their employees to landlords over their tenants, to name just a few.

These places have never had an enforceable definition of women. In a best-case scenario, a definition of women does nothing to their relationship. In anything short of best, the effects of redistributing power risk violence, from abuse to death.

The “biological reality of sex” is the stated motivator of the executive order, but it’s the economic reality of gender that will determine its consequences. It’s an embittering prospect. The order itself avers that it is crafted to protect cis women, to restore their rights and freedom. Anyone with even a passing familiarity of economic principles would know that the rights and freedom of women rest on their power.

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(1) Unilateral divorce is somewhat of a catch-all term to describe the ability of one partner to leave a marriage, but the actual change in law could have been the introduction of no-fault filing or the introduction of unilateral filing.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Kathryn Anne Edwards is a labor economist and independent policy consultant.

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