Your point is actually very much backed up by science and Iris Bohnet devotes an entire chapter to it in her book "What Works." Arguably one of the easiest way

Your point is actually very much backed up by science and Iris Bohnet devotes an entire chapter to it in her book "What Works." Arguably one of the easiest ways to reduce gender pay disparity is to give both women and men the _exact_ same amount of parental leave for the birth of a child. She actually argues we should go one step further and require new parents to take the leave because even men who are employed by companies with generous parental leave are under a tremendous amount of social pressure to return to work quickly and often do not use all of the time available to them even when they would have liked to stay home and spend more time with their family.