Don't blame businesses, don't blame women. Blame governments that refuse the responsibilities of taking hard, but necessary decisions, because they're afraid it

Don't blame businesses, don't blame women. Blame governments that refuse the responsibilities of taking hard, but necessary decisions, because they're afraid it'll cost them votes. They instead play shady games that only appear to resolve issues, when all they do is to force/allow both businesses and people to dabble in gray areas. Let's speak hypothetically. Let's say we're a government that sees that we have too many expenses and as a result have very high taxes. Yet, we still have some unresolved social issues for which we have no budget, such as maternity programs and 50+ employment protection (yes, these should be state responsibilities, no reason to offload it to businesses). We could decide to reshuffle our current programs to make room for these, but that would certainly means cutting into some other established programs (unpopular decisions = no no in politics). Alternatively, we could yet again openly increase taxes, at the risk of looking even more expensive than neighboring countries and losing even more businesses (no no). We will do neither, instead we'll come up with laws that makes us look good with the people (3 years maternity, ensured reemployment, 50+ protection, all bankrolled by businesses), while allowing employers to find loopholes (discrimination). The issues themselves remain unresolved and everybody goes home happy.