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By Aiden Pink August 30, 2017

The Trump administration has frozen the implementation of an Obama-era rule designed to ensure equal pay for women — a move that was backed by first daughter/presidential adviser Ivanka Trump, who has put women’s equality issues at the forefront of her public platform.

The federal Office of Management and Budget sent a memo Tuesday to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, announcing that it was going to halt implementing regulations incorporated by the Obama administration in September 2016. Those rules would have required employers to collect information on how much they pay employees, broken down by gender, race and ethnicity. The OMB expressed concerns in the memo that following through on those rules would violate employee privacy.

Ivanka Trump issued a statement Tuesday backing the move. “Ultimately, while I believe the intention was good and agree that pay transparency is important, the proposed policy would not yield the intended results,” she said, according to HuffPost. “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.”

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Feminist groups criticized the decision. “For somebody who has long held herself out as a champion for women and for gender equality, it’s really disappointing,” Vicki Shabo of the National Partnership for Women and Families told HuffPost. “[This] spits in the eye of gender equality and in the eyes of women and people of color who are so often paid less and do not know.”

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

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