ivanka Trump, who managed to parlay her status as a clothing designer and television personality's child into an honest-to-God job advising the President of the United States, has had a tough time adjusting to her life of public service. (Merely living in Washington, according to Vanity Fair, is a chore that "punctures" her self-esteem on a daily basis.) Although she solemnly pledged to serve as the administration's point person on environmental activism and women's empowerment, the West Wing has proven to be a tough place in which to make her voice heard, given how quickly and ably the president demonstrated that he gives precisely zero shits about either issue.What's so baffling about Ivanka Trump's work in the White House, though, is that when presented with even the tiniest shred of an opportunity to show that she might be capable of accomplishing anything of substance, the president's daughter has managed to whiff in spectacular fashion. Just this week, the administration announced that it would stay the implementation of an Obama-era rule that attempted to close the gender pay gap by requiring large employers to submit employee compensation data to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. As usual, Ivanka Trump managed to issue a statement on the subject that said exactly nothing.
Though Trump's initial inclination was to keep the data collection going, she was convinced by arguments from those opposing the rule, a White House official told CNN. Those against the rule advocated that it was ineffective and burdensome to employers.
For the record, a principal objection to the rule, as outlined in a letter from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to OMB Director Mick Mulvaney, is that compliance would require employers to fill out too much new paperwork, and as we all know, the moral imperative to ensure that women do not experience systemic discrimination in the workforce must be balanced against the great burden that additional data-gathering would place on corporate HR departments.Incredibly, for Ivanka Trump, this rationale was plenty good enough.
"Ultimately, while I believe the intention was good and agree that pay transparency is important, the proposed policy would not yield the intended results," Trump 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."
The OMB's decision to revoke a data collection rule—which is, at best, a tentative and measured first step in ending pay discrimination—is just about the easiest issue on which someone who purports to care about gender issues could take a stand, and she can't even manage to work a standard Washington phrase like "deeply concerned" into her response, let alone propose a substantive alternative to the rule that she's happily watching disintegrate before her eyes. If Ivanka Trump really cares about gender issues, and isn’t simply paying them lip service in a craven effort to retain her spot on the Manhattan holiday cocktail party circuit, there is an obvious solution available to her: Speak out publicly, and if her colleagues—a group that includes her own father—really won’t listen, quit. At this point, she has enough resources available to her, financial and otherwise, such that she probably doesn’t need West Wing credentials in order to make a difference.A fun thing about public service is that all the furrowed brows and soothing platitudes in the world mean nothing if, eventually, the receipts indicate that you are much more interested in saying the right thing than actually doing it. Ivanka Trump isn’t an activist, or an idealist, or even an ideologue. She’s an opportunist who has proven that any interest she may imagine she has in making the world a better place isn’t as strong as her desire to keep a job that she swears she never wanted in the first place.