First daughter Ivanka Trump, who made wage equality and workplace protections for women one of her signature issues on the campaign trail and in her personal brand, declared her support for the White House’s announcement Tuesday that it will halt a proposal requiring businesses to disclose employees’ pay, gender, race and ethnicity.
“While I believe the intention was good and agree that pay transparency is important, the proposed policy would not yield the intended results,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal. “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.”
Neomi Rao, the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, told the Wall Street Journal that the rule would have been “enormously burdensome.”
“We don’t believe it would actually help us gather information about wage and employment discrimination,” she said.
Former President Barack Obama’s administration proposed the rule in 2016 to collect wage and pay data from employers for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to analyze.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House said the information that would be collected under the rule would be too excessive to comply with the federal Paperwork Reduction Act.
Trump in April tweeted in support of Equal Pay Day and said, “We must work to close the gender pay gap!”
#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
She touted her father as someone who would fight for equal pay, and made support for working women a central pillar of her personal brand, though neither appear to have borne fruit in Trump’s new role as a senior member of her father’s administration.