Ivanka Trump Says Equal Pay Is In Trump's Platform During RNC, & Women Ask "Since When?"

On Thursday night, during the Republican National Convention, Ivanka Trump spoke before her father, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. To the shock of women around the country, Ivanka said equal pay for mothers and women is part of Trump's platform, but it was the first time the issue was mentioned by the Trump campaign. She specifically mentioned mothers, saying that the gender pay gap was actually not due to gender at all, but rather, it was the result of women becoming mothers. As a result, she said, Trump was going to make child care more affordable and was going to change labor laws so that mothers would receive equal pay for equal work.

Regardless of the factual errors in her statement (white, cis women including those who aren't mothers are still only paid 79 cents to the dollar that a man makes, and the wage gap is actually larger for moms), Ivanka's talk of "equal pay for equal work" did not sound like typical Trump talking points. In fact, Trump has previously said that, if women expect to make as much as men, they ought to "do as good a job" as men, according to the Huffington Post.

Additionally, Trump's own campaign has shown no commitment to equal pay for equal work regardless of gender. The Boston Globe found that the Trump campaign pays men on its staff one-third more than it pays women. Clinton's staff, on the other hand, paid men and women on its staff equally. Twitter took note of the way Ivanka seemed to be adding a whole new section to Trump's platform:

And when it comes to child care, Trump's campaign has come up equally dry. When women's policy organization Make It Work asked Trump what he would do about affordable child care in December, he tried to get out of the question by joking with the questioner, according to Think Progress. "I love children,” he said, as a response. Then, "It’s a big subject darling.” (Because Trump isn't sexist.) Then he said, "She wants to know my thoughts on child care. Come on, we’ll talk for about 10 hours." Gosh, that Trump! He's so funny that her lady brain must have been charmed out of remembering what she was asking!

Trump never answered the question. When he has answered the question, he's pointed to how his companies have provided child care, according to Think Progress:

It’s not expensive for a company to do it. You need one person or two people, and you need some blocks and you need some swings and some toys… I do it all over, and I get great people because of it… It’s something that can be done, I think, very easily by a company.

But Trump has never mentioned policy changes or economic incentives he would put in place to help companies provide affordable child care to its male and female employees (Because, remember, not only women are primary care providers for their kids. Hello, 2016).

Like many of Trump's talking points, he hasn't shown that he actually knows how to backup the promise of affordable child care or paid family leave or equal pay for equal work. And that is likely because he has no intention of instituting it. In her speech, Ivanka said equal pay and child care are priorities for Trump, and then, in his RNC speech immediately after her's, he didn't mention any of them. (He also didn't mention abortion, which matters in relation to child care, since Trump has said he's firmly anti-abortion and wants to force motherhood upon women).

In fact, during Trump's entire RNC speech, he only mentioned women in the context of "men, women, and children" in the U.S., and he only mentioned "family" when he was telling a story meant to portray the horror of undocumented immigrants. Women are not stupid. That is something Ivanka and her father seem to have forgotten. You cannot drop words like "equal pay" for the first time in the 2016 election cycle and think women are going to applaud, look pretty, and say "Thank you."