Ivanka Trump, a Woman, Supports Ending Key Equal-Pay Initiative

In a move that may disappoint some — but should surprise none — Ivanka Trump came out in support of killing a key Obama-era equal-pay initiative on Aug. 29. The effort would have required businesses to break down their employee records by gender and race/ethnicity alongside their documented rate of pay, and had it gone into effect in September as planned, it could have proved to be an immensely valuable data source for identifying and ultimately eliminating gender- and race-based inequities in the workplace. That is, until it was unceremoniously sacrificed by the bureaucracy for, get this, requiring too much paperwork.

Ivanka's decision to distance herself comes in the wake of a memo released by the Office of Management and Budget, which explained that "some aspects of the revised collection of information lack practical utility, are unnecessarily burdensome, and do not adequately address privacy and confidentiality issues." While perhaps this might have been a valid statement coming from any other administration, we are talking about one that had no qualms about requesting every single piece of voter data from all 50 states for no apparent reason.

With that in mind, it's far more believable that the decision to terminate the effort had more to do with what is initially presented in the memo as a review "in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act." In other words, the argument is that the fundamental flaw in the initiative was that it generated too much paperwork for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to review. The long and the short of it? It's a clear shot across the bow of gender equality in the workplace, and one that Ivanka Trump has subsequently endorsed.

For her part, Ivanka released a statement that was equally obtuse: "Ultimately, while I believe the intention was good and agree that pay transparency is important, the proposed policy would not yield the intended results." While it's unclear what results she thought the initiative intended to produce, what is clear is that it would've given far more data for officials to work with when it comes to assessing discrimination and inequality in the workplace and given far better insight into the patterns and propagations of such behavior. Ivanka continues to claim that she's an advocate for working women, but this latest move is yet another data point to suggest that, like her father, she isn't too bothered by not being a woman of her word . . . and doesn't care much for defending the rights of women other than herself, either.