BY TAYLOR FARNSWORTH
Ivanka Trump is often portrayed as a positive figure for women’s rights in the White House. She won over the majority of conservative skeptics of Donald Trump who argued that he demoralized women and minorities. But not Ivanka, she was the opposite of her father. Ivanka boasted about how she would work alongside her father to give a voice to women’s rights. But her words hold no validity when put next to her actions. Earlier this month, she announced that she was in favor of removing Obama’s gender pay gap policy. A policy put in place to work on enforcing equal pay among all genders, ethnic backgrounds, and races. A policy that she once claimed to support. So why the sudden change?
Ms. Trump argues that Obama’s policy “would not yield the intended results.” Except the policy has not yet been in effect and there is no mathematical evidence to support her claim. The Obama-era policy required companies that had more than one hundred employees to report detailed information on employee’s salaries to the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to ensure that no employee was being discriminated against. This seems standard and an easy way to determine whether or not women and minorities are being discriminated against in the work force. But Ms. Trump says the policy is “ineffective and burdensome.” But the only burden I see is the one on women and minorities who have matching job descriptions to white men but inadequate salaries. I don’t think that’s the burden Ms. Trump was referring to though.
It is through polls and data collection that we are able to state that there is an evident gap between the salary of a man and the salary of a woman or minority. Ms. Trump is aware of this, or else her political platform wouldn’t be geared towards combating it. In the beginning of April, she posted an image with statistics of the gender pay gap founded by the Women’s Policy Research’s annual report. Within the image it said, “Women earn 82 percent of the full-time weekly paycheck of a man. Black women earn 68 percent and Latina women earn 62 percent of the full-time weekly pay of a white man.” There is no argument against the fact that women and minorities are treated unfairly in the workplace. But if Ivanka truly is admit on doing something to change that, then why support the removal of a policy geared towards your same goal? And if you don’t like the policy, than what do you propose instead?
Ms. Trump claims that her main initiative in the White House is focusing her attention on the empowerment of women, women’s rights, and promoting education for science, math, technology, and engineering. I’d argue that dismissing Obama’s policy looks as if Ms. Trump is turning her back on the women and minorities who believed she would be a voice for them. The only proof we have that Ms. Trump and her father care about women’s rights is in their words, not their actions. While it is great to talk about being in support of women’s rights and gender equality, when you sit back and do nothing to help work on fixing those issues, that’s when women begin to lose their faith in you.
A real advocate for women would be fighting for the Obama-era policy to be enforced. A real advocate for women would be advocating for all women, not just some. A real advocate for women would question their father’s treatment towards women and minorities, not make excuses for him. Even if she does truly care about these issues, her actions show women and minorities otherwise.
