At Tuesday’s International Women’s Day breakfast in Canberra, Prime Minister Tony Abbott used his address to once again promote his paid parental leave scheme. He declared that “a fair dinkum paid parental leave scheme is an idea whose time has come” and described it as a watershed moment for feminism in Australia.
I am pleased to see Abbott self-identifying as a feminist. He said at the breakfast that while he opposed paid parental leave as a minister in the Howard government, in favour of the baby bonus, his views changed after considering what would be best for his three daughters.
I support a generous paid parental leave scheme and I commend the Government for its commitment to ensuring that superannuation is included in any future paid parental leave scheme. Without super, any career break perpetuates the issue of women lacking savings and long term economic independence.
I remain concerned though, that paid parental leave is still seen as a mechanism to assist women, rather than a mechanism to assist parents. The conversation is still about supporting mothers, but rarely about fathers. If we really want to progress gender equality, we need to actively encourage more men to take primary caring responsibilities. Two weeks paternity leave does not lead to shared responsibility for care-giving. Neither does the policy of inviting men to take the 26 weeks leave, but at the mother’s wage, accepting that in Australia, by and large, women’s wages are lower.
If we accept that parents should be paid their normal wage when on parental leave, then this should apply to both parents, not just mothers. What incentive is there for couples looking to share childcare responsibility when one parent has to consider a pay cut and the other doesn’t?
If we genuinely want to address gender inequality in Australia, we need to develop policies which proactively support shared responsibility for care-giving.
Paid parental leave schemes in some other countries include mechanisms to encourage both parents to take leave.
In an attempt to address the traditional imbalance in caring arrangements, Sweden’s paid parental leave scheme provides 480 days to be shared between the parents, with no more than 420 days to be taken by one parent (except in the case of single parents). An ‘equality bonus’ is paid to parents who share the leave equally. In Norway, parents share 49 weeks of leave (or 59 weeks at 80 per cent benefits) with a quota of 14 weeks reserved for each parent.
Norway’s experience is particularly illustrative of leave requirements successfully changing social attitudes. Norway introduced shared parental leave in 1977 and first established a quota for fathers in 1993. Before that, only 2-3% of men took leave to care for their children. Today, more than 90% of men take up their leave entitlements, and consistently report that they have stronger bonds with their children as a result. Other metrics in Norway demonstrate that this has led to men taking a more proactive role in both child rearing and other domestic and caring roles.
Enhancing Australia’s paid parental leave system is a good thing for gender equality. Efforts to ensure that women’s long term economic security is not affected by taking time out of the workforce to have children should be applauded. But we need a scheme that supports all parents to care for their children, not a scheme geared primarily toward women.
Tony Abbott’s scheme is a welcome start – but it’s not yet the watershed moment we have been waiting for.