I also agree that larger businesses should shoulder higher burden than smaller ones, but if we make any business pay in a headcount sensitive way, then we are creating disincentives which may be explored in opaque ways.

I also think that some industries, such as education, have substantially more women than men and thus will shoulder disproportionate burden. I also think that richer areas will shoulder the burden more easily.

I think these things point to a collective model of burden. I think bigger companies should shoulder uneven burden, but I'm not sure if different industries or areas should shoulder substantially different burden.

I suspect that well meaning attempts to rig the system that way would just backfire. Big companies have the resources, lawyers and incentives to manipulate and exploit regulations like that to their advantage. I think the simplest approach, which is just regulating against discrimination, may not be perfect but trying to come up with a perfect system will just impose so much regulation and costs and exploitable loopholes that it wouldn’t end up any better and could well be both worse and more expensive.

Note I’m not taking a blanket all regulation is bad stance. I support regulation to protect pregnant employees and family life. I am recruiting right now for a contractor to cover for a pregnant employee in my team (in the UK). I just think in general the simplest approach is usually the beast, or anyway the least worst.

I think we agree that companies shouldn't be allowed to discriminate on the basis of sex, reproductive status, or family plans. However, I would contend that a simple blanket rule doesn't address the incentives to discriminate.

I would also argue that burden to compensate companies for employees taking time off for personal or family matters (regardless of sex, reproductive plan or status) should be shouldered at the state or national level, and not at local level where there may be higher disparity in both burden and capacity. If both men and women are allotted mandated time to attend to family, and both men and women warrant access to funding for their employers, then companies would lose incentives to discriminate because presumably everyone would want their time off.

If the federal government compensated businesses, then startups and small businesses wouldn't be exempt from protection, nor unequally stressed relative to bigger businesses. As another commentator pointed out, the UK has a similar model.

I don't think companies like Google discriminate because of funding. They discriminate because they want their engineers doing tons of overtime and focusing on their assigned projects at the expense of personal time and private lives. No amount of funding is going to change that culture.