Father’s Day: New Dads, Paternity Leave and Gender Equality

As Father’s Day approaches, we reflect on a hot topic that is helping to drive gender equality in Europe and beyond: paternity leave and shared parental leave.

The USA is miles away from the starting line on this matter. 182 countries provide paid maternity leave (the USA sits beside Oman and Papua New Guinea as sole exceptions) and 70 countries provide paid paternity leave. The USA is the only industrialized country that does not mandate some kind of paid parental leave to be provided by employers, only three states (California, Rhode Island, and New Jersey) offer paid leave for both parents, and companies offering paid maternity and paternity leave dropped from 17% in 2010 to 12% in 2014.

At the same time, research shows that paid maternity leave and breastfeeding breaks would help women to advance further in their careers by keeping them integrated in the workforce. But what could really change the game for women, men, families, and gender equality – and have positive growth implications for the GDP – is not just paid maternity leave that still regards mothers as the primary caretakers, but paid parental leave that reflects and encourages true co-parenting.

Newborn Shared Parental Leave in the UK

Only half a dozen countries offer men more than two weeks paternity leave, and the UK has just become one of them by introducing shared parental leave. The Telegraph has called it, “the most progressive new parent support policy that Britain has ever had.”

Before mothers had 52 weeks and fathers had two paid weeks. The new UK policy allows that after the initial two weeks of compulsory maternal leave, 50 weeks of shared parental leave and 37 weeks of pay can be divided up between couples (including adopting & same sex) anyway they chose: taking at the same time, in rotation, and/or in three separate blocks of time each.

The policy is not without bumps. One key issue is it doesn’t add actual weeks off work for families on top of what mothers already received. Jeremy Davies, head of communications at The Fatherhood Institute told The Guardian, “Although it’s called shared parental leave it’s really transferable maternity leave. It doesn’t give fathers any independent right or responsibility for taking time off, and it doesn’t fundamentally challenge employers’ attitudes.”

Other issuesinclude low financial viability for many couples due to reduced pay, whether high-earning women will feel more pressure to get back to work sooner, and whether the policy will result in reduced breastfeeding rates. Good questions, important choices. But now at least the choice is increasingly for individual couples to make based on their needs.

It may be an imperfect step in the right direction, but then children don’t walk in one day either.

Established Shared Parental Leave in Sweden

While news to the UK, in Sweden gender-neutral parental leave is 40 years in the making.

In 2014, Sweden ranked fourth in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index, following Iceland, Finland and Norway. The higher the rank, the greater gender equality as measured by “the relative gaps between women and men across four key areas: health, education, economy, and politics”, regardless of the absolute level of resources. The UK and the USA rank in the twenties.

According to The Economist, almost 90% of new Swedish fathers take paternity leave, and last year340,000 dads took an average of seven weeks each. It began 40 years ago as six months of paternity leave per child at 90% pay to be shared as couples wished. Dads didn’t even take one percent of it. Today, they take 25% of what has expanded to 16 months of shared paid paternal leave. Although paternal leave is flexible between parents, Sweden is upping the paid use-it-or-lose-it-father-only portion from two to three months in an effort towards increasing gender equality.

Parental Leave – It’s Good for Everyone

Research has shown that it’s taboo to many men to even admit they’d like to modify their work schedule to take time at home. Yet over 99% of men in a survey of over 1,000 fathers felt employers should offer paid paternity leave. Even taking just two weeks parental leave in countries such as the USA, Britain, Australia, and Denmark has shown to make positive differences for the whole family.

More Balanced Family Gender Dynamics

As Liza Mundy writes in the The Atlantic, “The genius of paternity leave is that it shapes domestic and parenting habits as they are forming.” When both partners take paternal leave, it sets up the couple up to establish a more gender-neutral pattern where work, household, and family responsibilities are more evenly shared in a two-income household.

According to Mundy, paternity leave has been shown to “boost male participation in the household, enhance female participation in the labor force, and promote gender equity in both domains.”

Dads who take paternity leave are likely to remain more involved in child-care (feeding, bathing, playing, reading) many months after the leave period, compared to fathers who did not. There’s also evidence that being able to take paternity leave helps increase men’s confidence as parents, and they end up being “more competent and committed fathers whose greater involvement persists as their children grow up.”

Children benefit too. Research by the University of Oslo has shown that children’s learning development benefits when dads can take paternity leave – finding that children’s performance at secondary school improved when fathers had taken more time off early on, especially daughters.

More Balanced Workplace Gender Dynamics

More countries are considering that paternity leave is key for improving women’s career prospects, helping them to be seen more equally within, and stay connected to, the workforce.

Mundy, director of the Breadwinning & Caregiving Program at New America, writes that paternal leave keeps women from being singled out as prospective parents in the office, which can hold back their advancement in insidious ways. “If everybody—male or female—is asking for leave or taking leave that they already qualify for, I think it just levels the playing field for how men or women are looked at in the office.”

Because women’s childbearing years coincide with their peak earning years, encouraging paid paternity leave can help narrow the wage gap too. A Swedish study found that a women’s future earnings increased by 7% for every month her partner took parental leave. According to The Economist, greater uptake of parental leave by fathers in Sweden has been associated with higher levels of self-reported happiness in women and higher incomes.

In a survey of over 250 California firms, 90% of firms said that paid paternal leave had a positive or neutral impact on productivity, performance, and profitability, with minimal impact on operations and finances. Tech companies in the USA who pro-actively employ paid maternity and paternity policies are starting to recognize that the long-term benefits in retention and attracting talent are good for both families and business.

As we celebrate Father’s Day, let’s remember that gender equality is not only about promoting women’s equality in the workplace. It’s also about promoting men’s equality in the home and family.

Parental leave holds the potential to offer a big step forward for both.