Back in 2009 former president Barack Obama launched the White House Council on Women and Girls as a means to reach out to women's interest groups and confront the most prominent obstacles hindering gender equality.

But what was once a division meant to bolster women and girls and help them advance in society could soon be dismantled, according to a report from Politico. Three White House officials revealed that the Trump administration is considering shutting the council down, and spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed that they are "evaluating the best positioning of this office going forward and other legacy Obama offices."

“We want the input of the various agencies to understand the assets they have so that we make this office additive, not redundant,” she said.

When Donald Trump was first sworn in, signs seemed to point toward him keeping the office in place. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway indicated that she would take charge of the council. In April, however, Hicks confirmed that Ivanka Trump and deputy national security adviser Dina Powell had begun an internal review of the office to determine how efficiently it handled its designated issues (like equal pay and health care). The audit was supposed to be completed by the end of May, but by late June "the status of the office was still in question, with one senior administration official suggesting that it hadn’t been that effective."

Should the council officially fold—which seems likely—the sole White House presence confronting women's issues will be Ivanka Trump. In her conversation with Politico, Hicks highlighted the First Daughter's policy initiatives meant to address these matters, including her efforts to secure paid family leave and encourage girls to pursue STEM education, but some worry this will not be enough to successfully handle the complex challenges women and girls face. Beyond that, it indicates that tackling these obstacles and achieving gender equality is not a priority for the administration.

“It shows the priority you place on the issues surrounding women and girls,” Tina Tchen, who served as the director of Obama’s White House Council on Women and Girls as well as Michelle Obama’s chief of staff, told Politico. “They have business councils and other councils. That’s how you demonstrate to everyone in the agencies where their efforts should be focused.”

Trump would not be the first Republican president to disassemble a White House initiative tasked with gender equality. Bill Clinton's Office for Women’s Initiatives and Outreach was quietly dissolved by George W. Bush and folded into his Office of Public Liaison. Obama's office served as a means to re-create and expand on the one launched by his Democratic predecessor. But because of Trump's frequent and public attacks on women—the latest being a series of Tweets targeting Morning Joe cohost Mika Brzezinski—the administration is already facing backlash for terminating a program that would help advance women and girls.

“I see no evidence, zero, that Donald Trump has anyone in his orbit to advocate for women and girls,” National Organization for Women president Terry O’Neill, who helped develop the contraception mandate within Obamacare, told Politico. "We need a real office that would really advocate."