I’m not sure if I’d put it all down to active intent, but in either case I agree with your main point: creativity is needed to being a workforce that was mainly focused on male employment to one that includes everyone, not because employing women requires more creativity in itself.
Either I’m not grasping it, or you’re moving the goalposts. You claimed that pregnancy and nursing have no inherent effect on careers or financial well being, but that any disadvantage must be due to active bias (willfully setting up careers to exclude pregnant people). If an inherent effect exists, it would have to be natural. The examples I gave all show direct and natural disadvantages that pregnancy would have on someone if they were competing on a level playing field with someone who was not pregnant or nursing. If someone leaves work for a few months and isn’t given paid maternity leave, this affects their financial well-being. It takes laws or employers to decide that this time off work should be covered by the company, not taken from the woman’s salary. If people are paid by the hour or for their production, not paying them would not necessarily be discriminatory; in fact, paying them while they are at home is discriminating between valid and invalid leave. We can all agree that there are many discriminatory practices that needlessly exclude women, so I don’t need to point that out.
It is hard to imagine a similar advantage that pregnancy or nursing would give in the workforce that would exclude men if the roles were reversed, so I don’t think the second part of your argument is valid (although if you can point out major issues specific to men that would put them at a disadvantage, that would help). In the same way as with disability though, it is stupid to exclude someone based on these disadvantages, as long as the ability is not crucial to the work being done. If pregnant people want to keep working, let other people do the heavy lifting. When they need time off, don’t penalise them for it. Recognise their strengths and don’t require them to be someone else before they can take part.
Re: differences vs. disparity: Women who stay at home for longer periods or take part time instead of full time work may have a wage disparity for that reason, or may not progress as far in their careers. As I mentioned, this could be due to inequality/discrimination (for instance, a partner who is unwilling to do their share, lack of childcare or a bias in the workplace), or it could be an active choice to spend more time with family, in which case it is unclear whether they would consider themselves at a disadvantage (so calling the lower wage a disparity would not be taking their wider goals into account). In reality there is a confusing mix of these reasons, and the statistics often don’t show the full story.
