He accused the equal wages movement of ignoring a point. I showed where the point was being considered.
No, you showed where they are actually making the problem worse. More paid leave is always disproportionately taken by women. Sure, you can argue that taking time off for kids
shouldn't hurt people's future earnings. But that doesn't change the fact that it
does. Even in Sweden.
So we have two main proposals, the revamped equal pay act and the increased paid leave (which will almost all be utilized by women).
The first one is not proven to be able to achieve anything that the existing Equal Pay Act 1963 doesn't already address - it's already illegal to pay a woman less for the exact same role. Even if it's 100% successful in rooting out the direct paycheck-to-paycheck discrepancies that have slipped past the Equal Pay Act for the last 50 years, these only represent a tiny fraction of the gender pay gap.
The second one actually increases the amount of time off that women will take from work. And taking time off from work is by far the largest chunk of why the gap exists. Additionally, no matter who pays for the leave, it has negative economic effects on your employer. This means a company with lots of people taking leave sees lower profits, which in the long run reduces the pay raises for everyone in the company. So, if you have an industry with a lot of women, and the government entices more of them to take time off, then everyone in the industry is going to see reduced wages in the long run, regardless of whether they have kids themselves or not. This plays a part in reducing relative pay in industries dominated by women.
So, you have one policy which attacks the most minute possible part of the wage gap, and make that better, and we're supposed to swallow the line that this is sufficiently addressing the wage gap issue, somehow. On the other hand, you have a policy which directly fuels the single thing that adds the most to the wage gap. Which one is going to win out?