On the face of it, Prince William's decision to take two weeks of job-protected, paid statutory paternity leave is absurd.
The heir to the British throne can live without the approximately $206 a week in taxpayer funds that men in the United Kingdom are entitled to receive if they take time off to welcome a baby.
But as a symbolic gesture, the prince's choice is, as the Brits would say, brilliant. For in William's subtle, necessarily apolitical, good-guy way, he has issued the boldest possible statement of support for true workplace equality between men and women. It's a message that was too quickly buried amid all the baby-naming hysteria this week. And it's one that we in the United States need to hear if we're ever going to get past the place where women have been mired for the past decade.