Parental Benefits: Strengthening a Nation

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By Jennifer Heard.

Cultural icons may have changed – we’ve moved from June Cleaver to Buffy the Vampire Slayer – but our cultural conditioning about the gender-based division of labour has evolved much more slowly. Until society becomes more forward-looking, innovative social policies that truly facilitate a better work/family balance are not looming on the horizon. Yet.

Reconciling work and family life is one of the difficult challenges facing young parents today. Couples are torn between wanting career success and raising a family. Parental leave policies and legislation were intended as a way to promote gender equity both in the workplace and in the family, to enhance labour supply and improve early child development. However enlightened these policies, studies show that, while women have benefited from maternity leave, these policies have had limited success with men. Sadly, public approval of equal parenthood and gender equity is lagging behind the idealistic rhetoric of policy-makers.

Progress for women

Prior to 1970, there were no public policies in Canada designed to protect women’s jobs or provide maternity benefits. When a woman became pregnant, she retired from the workforce to become a mother and housewife. However, in 1971, under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, maternity benefits were introduced under the Canada Labour Code. At this time, a female employee became entitled to 17 weeks of maternity leave after a two-week waiting period. Now, these employment insurance benefits extend to a full year and cover 55% of a woman’s weekly earnings up to a weekly maximum of $501 a week. To be eligible, an employee must have worked 600 hours in the previous year.

Maternity benefits became an important public policy because women wanted to be assured that, if they left the workforce to have a baby, they could return without fear of discrimination and retain their job. This guarantee made women less reluctant to get pregnant because they were not financially penalized. They also gave incentives to women to return and participate in the labour force which helps to increase a country’s GDP.

In addition, these policies were factors in influencing changes in the female employment rate because, for the first time, mothers were given paid leave and a guarantee of a job when they returned to work. One key statistic underlines this dramatic social shift: in 1973, some 37.7% of mothers with children were engaged in paid work; by 2002, that figure had more than doubled to 78.3%!

Even in the U.S. which has the least generous maternity leave of all Western  industrialized nations (job protection after maternity leave was not legislated until 1993, under President Bill Clinton, and even today it is unpaid), at least one study has found that women who are employed during pregnancy have a stronger attachment to the labour force than those who are not. The study shows that the right to paid maternity leave causes women to be more motivated to return to work sooner.

Progress for men

In 1990, Canadian biological and adoptive fathers became eligible for paid benefits which added 10 weeks of parental benefits to be shared with the mother as the couple saw fit.

These “Daddy Days” were introduced to overcome the charges that only women were getting time off for their babies and therefore men were being discriminated against. It was also intended to encourage both father and mother to take time off to bond with the child, which psychologists say is a benefit to both parents and child.

To encourage more fathers to take paternal leave, some countries have passed laws that designate the leave for fathers only. In socially progressive Sweden, where men were granted parental leave benefits in 1974, men are forced to take one month leave. These “father quotas” are exclusively for men and cannot be transferred to mothers. The common saying for these Swedish men is: “Use it or lose it.” This policy of leave reserved exclusively for men has also been adopted by Portugal. The Portuguese law was adopted in 2000 and within three years,  the number of men taking advantage of this leave has jumped from very few to between 30 – 40%.

To encourage more gender equity in the employment and parenting, Iceland implemented the world’s most innovative system in 2000. The Icelandic Act of Maternity/Paternity and Parental Leave goes the furthest today in promoting equality by giving each parent three months paid leave and a further three months to be shared. As a result, 90% of fathers take advantage of their right to paid leave. Even more important, the act has had the effect of levelling the status of men and women in the labour market, because parents take only three months off each.

Changing the mindset

But, even in countries with generous parental leave, men do not take advantage of it because they have been culturally indoctrinated into ideas about the gender distribution of labour. For example, in the European Union, the majority of men have the right to parental leave, but don’t take it. In fact, a total of 84% of men didn’t in 2003!

This shows how gender ideology determines domestic role-sharing and therefore, most men are reluctant to take advantage of paternal leave because it involves child-caring and household duties. In the workplace, men taking “Daddy Days” are often seen as not as committed as their colleagues to advancing their careers. Until work organizations become more female-dominated, it will be difficult to change this behaviour pattern.

So how do we begin to change the cultural mindset of parental leave into one aligned with places like Sweden and Iceland?  How do we make it not only a suggestion but an obligation so that they can bond with their newborn children and engage in child-rearing?

1. Encourage companies not to penalize their employees financially for taking leave

2. Promote more family-friendly policies such as childcare centres on the company premises.

3. Increase the replacement salary rate, encouraging more parents to take parental leave and bond with their children instead of putting financial pressure on the family.

Family-friendly policies have been shown to respect women’s rights and foster increased gender equity at home and in the workplace, ultimately changing societal values to reflect that the caring of children is as important as both the financial needs of the family, and the career opportunities of the parents. We’re making progress, but we still have a long way to go.

Jennifer Heard is a 26-year-old from Toronto, Ontario. In 2010 she obtained an honors degree in political science and French and has worked on over a dozen Canadian political campaigns since 2006. Today Jennifer is busy arguing her point of view due to her passion for women’s rights.

Sources:

Lawrence M. Berger, and Jane Waldfogel, “Maternity Leave and the Employment of New Mothers in the United States,” Journal of Population Economics, 17.2 (2004)

Ingólfur V. Gíslason, “Parental leave in Iceland : bringing the fathers in. Developments in the wake of new legislation in 2000,” Ministry of Social Affairs and Centre for Gender Equality (2007)

OECD, “Parental Leave to Care for Children.”

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