President Trump’s administration, via the Office of Management and Budget, announced at the end of August that businesses would immediately cease being required to submit pay data on gender, race, and ethnicity.
Last week, the Office of Management and Budget announced that it would not be implementing requirements for business to track and report pay disparity based on gender, race, and ethnicity. The policy enacted by President Obama was set to start in March 2018 and would require businesses with 100 or more employees to provide data to combat the current wage gap in America.
In 1963, amid the space race and Beatle-mania, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963 into action. With that action, employers were prohibited from “paying wages to employees in such establishment at a rate less than the rate at which he pays wages to employees of the opposite sex in such establishment for equal work.” This boosted women’s equality in all facets of society but most notably in the workforce. Women started pursuing careers in new fields and with new ambition. Yet the pay gap between men and women remained.
President Obama’s administration furthered the cause of equal pay with the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. This legislation furthered the ability of workers who believed that they had been discriminated against based on gender to legally challenge their employer with an official charge filed through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
An additional Presidential Memorandum was issued in April 2014 requiring Federal contractors and subcontractors to report “summary data on the compensation paid their employees, including data by sex and race.” Yet in 2015, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that women still only make 80% of the wages of their male counterparts. Despite aggressive legislation, the pay gap is still a reality in today’s workforce.
In January 2016, the EEOC and the Department of Labor proposed additional measures to decrease the pay gap. The policy requires businesses with 100 or more employees to submit data about compensation broken down by gender, race, and ethnicity via a form EEO-1. This was heralded as an important step towards pay equality. The proposed implementation of this requirement would begin in March 2018.
President Trump’s administration, via the Office of Management and Budget, announced at the end of August that businesses would immediately cease being required to submit pay data on gender, race, and ethnicity. The EEOC will not require businesses to submit the EEO-1 form. The administration wants to review the effectiveness of the data collection and its actual impact on the pay gap.
The President’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, who is herself an accomplished businesswoman and advocate for gender equality in the workplace, agrees with the change. Ivanka Trump made a statement supporting the administration’s position, stating “Ultimately, while I believe the intention was good and agree that pay transparency is important, the proposed policy would not yield the intended results.”
#EqualPayDay is a reminder that women deserve equal pay for equal work. We must work to close the gender pay gap! https://t.co/CcwsoBXWdF
— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) April 4, 2017
This comes as somewhat of a surprise to those familiar with Trump’s previously shared stance on women’s equality in the workplace. Critics argue that this move shows that her rhetoric does not match her actions.
Trump maintains that she and the administration are committed to “robust policies aimed at eliminating the gender wage gap.” The priority is on enacting policies that will be effective rather than those that simply add requirements without having the intended results.
Ivanka Trump holds an unpaid position in the White House, acting as a senior advisor to her father, President Donald Trump. The issues most important to her include women in the workplace, paid family leave, tax reform, combating human trafficking, and promoting science, technology, engineering, and math in education.
So, if the current method of tracking and reporting data is not sufficient to make necessary progress to combat the gender pay gap, what is? That remains to be seen. President Trump will be meeting with his Cabinet this weekend to discuss his priorities going forward. Given the trust that President Trump has shown in his daughter’s priorities and judgment, including her stance on equal pay, it is expected that the issue will be discussed. The President will also receive briefings on the status of Hurricane Harvey recovery and Hurricane Irma.
