Five months ago, Ivanka Trump made headlines when she said 'women deserve equal pay for equal work.'
The 35-year-old came into her father's administration vowing to fight for women in the workplace, yet has blessed a White House plan to roll back an Obama-era policy aimed at eliminating the gender pay gap.
Starting in the spring of 2018, businesses with 100 or more employees would have had to add salary information to their existing federal reporting on the race and gender demographics of their workforces.
Using that data, the federal government would then have had hard evidence of pay discrimination.
The administration confirmed this week it would halt the implementation of the rule – with the backing of Trump and a White House adviser who has hosted numerous roundtables on women's economic issues.
Neomi Rao, who runs the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, has told the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to stop the rule from going into effect, claiming that it would be 'enormously burdensome' to companies.
'We don't believe it would actually help us gather information about wage and employment discrimination.'
Ivanka, who has made closing the gender wage gap a central focus of her role in the administration, agrees with her Dad.
'Ultimately, while I believe the intention was good and agree that pay transparency is important, the proposed policy would not yield the intended results,' she said in a statement.
'We look forward to continuing to work with EEOC, OMB, Congress and all relevant stakeholders on robust policies aimed at eliminating the gender wage gap.'
Women's groups universally decried the move.
'This is not a technical tweak as they would have you believe. Make no mistake— it's an all-out attack on equal pay,' Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women's Law Center, said in a statement on Tuesday.
'Today's action sends a clear message to employers,' Graves added. 'If you want to ignore pay inequities and sweep them under the rug, this Administration has your back.'
This news isn't exactly surprising. Sure, Trump issued a memo declaring August 26, the anniversary of the 19th Amendment, 'Women's Equality Day' and praised efforts to help women entrepreneurs and establish paid family leave.
But he's also previously said that 'you're gonna make the same if you do as good a job,' and 'when you have to categorize men and women into a particular group and a particular pay scale, it gets very—because people do different jobs' indicating he doesn't actually believe, or understand, the concept of equal pay.
He's also stayed away from clauses that make it easier for companies to cover up cases of sexual harassment.
Ivanka, on the other hand, seemed like a reasonable, trustworthy, pro-woman foil to her father.
Yet, on average, women in the U.S. are paid 80 cents for every dollar men earn. The pay gap for women of color is even worse: Hispanic women earn 54 cents on the dollar, while black women make 63 cents.
Speaking about change is very different from working to implement actual change.
