As an employment lawyer, I get to look under the hood of companies and see which ones have clever HR marketing versus those with genuine employee-friendly policies. When it comes to parental leave, too often I see that there is a quiet expectation that everyone will be “back to normal” by month four. Flexible work is also thrown around like a buzz word but rarely given any teeth beyond a right to ask for it.
So when a friend recently sent me DISSH’s Paid Parental Leave Program, it genuinely caught me off guard. Not because their generous paid entitlement puts them ahead of most retailers, or that they continue to pay superannuation for up to 52 weeks. What stopped me was the four-phase framework that treats parenting as a continuum, not an event.
Phase one is pre-baby. Paid leave for IVF, fertility treatment, egg freezing, surrogacy and adoption planning, pregnancy-related illness, and a tailored transition coaching program for expecting parents. Phase two is the 16-week parental leave. Phase three is the return to work, financial support, flexible options, and coaching for the first eight weeks. Phase four is the part I haven’t found an Australian parallel for: ongoing paid leave that follows the child, not just the baby. It includes two weeks additional paid leave per year until the child is 12 to cover early pickups, sick kids, dentist appointments and every good milestone in between. It’s employer recognition that the caring load doesn’t end when the parental leave does.
And it’s the one that most directly targets what advocacy organisations like The Parenthood call “the motherhood penalty.” DISSH is no stranger to this, and having a 94% female workforce, they know their policies will reach the people who need them. Treasury’s own analysis shows mothers’ earnings drop by an average of 55 per cent in the five years after a first child, while fathers’ earnings barely move. This data illustrates that the motherhood penalty is not reducing under current labour laws in Australia.
Australia abolished its formal marriage bars in 1966, a hard-won win I’ll never minimise. Some women wanted to work and should never have been banned; others wanted to raise children full-time. There is no right answer, which is precisely why returning to work was framed as the mother’s choice, a decision about identity and ambition. That framing no longer fits now that the cost of living has shifted this choice to a privilege, because the systems that would make it neutral, such as universal childcare, affordable housing and utilities, and extended paid family support, have never been built to scale. And the male breadwinner model we are still forced to operate within can no longer support a household on its own because real wages have flatlined for decades.
Single mothers, who carry the load on one income, feel this the hardest given Australia’s social safety net for sole parents remains one of the worst in the OECD.
The mother who does return finds workplaces designed around someone with no caring load, where flexibility is optional for the employer and children’s needs regularly interfere with your continuous availability. Choice without proper systems in place isn’t choice; it’s a lose-lose held together by women’s unpaid labour.
This is why it was so refreshing to read DISSH’s PPLP, to see an employer recognise that these problems exist and create smart policies to help fix them. It’s also no surprise that they have stated that since implementing the policy, there has been a 140 per cent boost in job applications. The company’s willingness to put the costings on the table and prove this is good business is pioneering and deserves celebrating.