Family Friendly Parental Leave is a move towards Gender Equality

Welcoming a new child into your family is one life’s momentous events. Whether you are a single parent, mother or father, becoming the parent to a biological or adopted child, whether for the first or fifth time, the transition is significant. The support a family receives during this time can impact upon their health and wellbeing, finances and career opportunities for the decades that follow.

Families have 3 options when it comes to paid parental leave in Australia.

Option 1: Government Support

Parental leave from the government is paid at minimum wage for up to 18 weeks to either the primary carer, which is described as the birth mother or adoptive parent, but only if they pass the strict income, work and residency tests.  The Government also offers ‘Dad and Partner Pay’ which offers 2 weeks of minimum wage paid to the partner of a birth mother or adoptive parent, known as the secondary carer.

To receive either of these payments, an eligible parent must earn less than $150k per year and have worked for at least one day per week for 10 of the 13 months prior to the birth or adoption of their child. Both Parental Leave and Partner Pay can be taken anytime in the first year of the child’s life and the recipient must not work at all during the paid parental leave period.

Compared to paid parental leave schemes internationally, Australian parents are the second worst off in the OECD. A notable global trend in parental leave policies is the promotion of gender equality through “family leave” as opposed to “maternity” and “paternity” leave.

In Sweden a family is entitled to 80% of their usual salary for 480 days (16 months) of parental leave, known as föräldrapenning. This can be used by the mother or the father and each parent has the exclusive right to 90 of those days. The leave is available to both parents until the child is eight years old.

Paid parental leave in Australia has been available to either the mother or father since its introduction in 2011. However, in reality, less than 1 in 20 fathers take primary parental leave. And despite common perceptions of ‘modern fatherhood’, fewer than 5% of Australian dads are stay at home parents. With many opting to take the 2 weeks dad and partner pay as offered by the Government, and some father’s not taking any leave at all.

Option 2: Employer Entitlements

Many Australians do not have any parental leave offered by their employer. For those who do, entitlements vary across professions and industries, with great discrepancies between maternity and paternity leave.

Brilliantly, lately we have seen private companies taking a stand and making positive contributions to gender equality with their family friendly parental leave policies. Most significantly is perhaps the move away from the terms ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ carer, with many employers embracing the idea that every parenting role is valuable and should be supported.

Law firm Baker McKenzie was recently announced their new family leave policy, offering 18 weeks of paid leave (including superannuation) for all parents who welcome a new child into their family, whether or not there is another parent at home. This leave will be available for up to 2 years from the birth or adoption of a child. 

Fortunately for those who are eligible, there is nothing prohibiting a primary carer from taking both employer and government parental leave, just not at the same time.

Option 3: Fend for Yourself

Sadly, it must be highlighted that there are parents who do not qualify for support at all. For example, a mother without any employment entitlements who stays home with her first child and does not go back to work before welcoming her second, will not qualify for the Government’s paid parental leave.

This means many women are forced into a difficult financial position where they either have to go back to work before they are physically and emotionally ready in order to pay the bills, or they cannot afford to go back to work because of the crippling cost of childcare. Imagine the difficulties faced by a single mother in this situation.

There are those parents who are both the primary carer and self-employed, who won’t be able to receive the Government’s parental leave payment if they cannot, whether for financial or operational reasons, step away from work during the leave period.

So, what can be done?

There is no doubt that having children is disrupting to a career. Practically, it requires time out of the workplace and an adjustment to a new set of priorities and responsibilities. Expenses increase and earning capacity often decreases. The issue is that the emotional and economic burden of parenthood is heavier upon the primary carer, and in most Australian families that is the woman.

Gender is not determinative of one’s ability to be a great parent. Women’s participation in the workforce will never be equitable if men’s participation in parenthood and domestic responsibilities is not.

Australia’s current policy position seems to be telling dads and partners that they should be at work and asking mothers to stay home or to work part-time so they can assume the primary care role. By reinforcing outdated assumptions about gender, parental leave is a major obstacle to achieving gender equality and closing the gender pay gap.

A family friendly approach to parental leave would, like in Sweden, take gender out of the equation by offering a generous term of paid leave to both parents, empowering them to decide how they divide the care and earning responsibilities in their family as they welcome each new child. Every family is unique, and all families deserve support.