“Barriers to employment,” professor, or barriers to business growth? You appear to view this through the lens of social justice, casting aside the economic reality of protectionist legislation like this. Whether it’s idealism or naivete, your words are proof that more professors need to study, or at least encounter, economics (not that I have a degree in econ, but a library card goes a long way).

Feel-good laws like these don’t help the economy/our country as they will likely increase the amount of jobs shipped overseas, where less regulation is the status quo of most/many labor markets. If the US enacts similar legislation, you can watch jobs jump overseas even faster than their already alarming current rate. This will only make the American business environment even worse as our country has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world and simultaneously fails to make almost any investment in infrastructure because it isn’t as politically sexy as laws like this, which, although illogical, appease many voters.

Professors can say what they want as they sit shrouded in tenure and pensions, but go try and run a business. Extra benefits for women, especially money paid out for not working, i.e., maternity leave, may mean businesses hire one fewer worker or they can’t invest in new equipment or training. As a result, growth is slowed as more benefits for women means less jobs for everybody else. A similar event often happens when minimum wage is raised and unemployment increases; I view this as reasonably analogous.

Less regulation is better for our labor markets–not more.