Um no?
Imagine you're doing a construction project and your lead engineer is a woman. She's very smart, has 10 years+ of experience in this field, and she's one of the few people who can do this. Suddenly she gets pregnant and takes the last 3 months of pregnancy off plus another 6 months after the child is born; she's gone for a total of 9 months. How much does that cost? This person is extremely hard to replace. You can't just call a temp agency and get some random idiot to monitor the project.
This is why women don't get promoted as often. They're just as strong and intelligent as men, but elevating them to a position where the project needs them can end up costing the company millions when pregnancy happens, and you know it will eventually happen because most women eventually do have at least one kid.
I don't know what I think about this.
What if you're a manager or director of some division? Many of these administrative-style jobs require that person to be able to be contacted 24/7. They know how everything works, whenever something goes wrong under them it is their problem, and working as many hours every week as needed is requisite.
I get equality. I get that procreation is necessary and discriminating against women because they happen to carry those reproductive parts is douchy. But I cannot think of any fair solution that adequately addresses this responsibility problem. Once you have so much power you cannot take off a month without your responsibilities going down the drain or having to spend an unreasonable amount of resources finding a replacement--a month, must less a year.
Mandating liberal labor laws like allowing a full year of leave would only serve to perpetuate the discrimination and even further provide incentive to not promote women. Sorry, but that law is a big pile of crap. If a family thinks they need to be able to take a YEAR off from work then that needs to go into their familial planning.
How do you create a law that is fair and equal when Biology is not equal? I'm completely stumped on this one.