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Additional paternity leave - positive impact on women in science?
24 August 2010
By Blanka Sengerová
A few months ago I heard on the radio that UK legislators have introduced a new option for families and fathers will be able to take extra paternity leave during the second six months of the child's life.
As far as I understand, currently it is possible for women to take six months off with some reasonable pay (depending on company). They can take the second six months off as well with a guarantee of going back to their job, but the pay is generally much lower. According to the new legislation on additional paternity leave, it will now be possible for fathers to take all or part of that second six months off instead. The rules only apply to children due to be born after April 2011, in order to give employers enought time to get prepared for the changes.
As a woman, whether I want to have children in future or not, I think this is a win-win situation because:
i) It will no longer be just women in their 20s/30s who can be subtly discriminated against at interview/hiring stage, because men in that age group will now also be able to take time off for family reasons.
ii) It gives extra flexibility to the parents of the child (in the Mothers in Science publications that others have linked to previously - http://www.york.ac.uk/res/chong/pdfs/MothersInScience_bk_finalWeb.pdf - it suggested that a number of women in science were able to do what they did as they had a "househusband" at home, and with this enshrined in law, this will make such option more feasible).
iii) Above all, as research staff in fixed term contracts, the fact that parent number 2, who may not be in a fixed term contract, can take the time off, seems great to me.
So in all, I think that this new legislation could have an even greater benefit in academia where fixed term contracts are the norm - taking six months off may be neither here nor there for a permanent contract but could be a quarter to a sixth of your time in a two or three year contract.
Having said that, having discussed this with various people, I've heard a few people who had doubts about the new law. Some of the objections included:
i) This is going to be really bad for employers interviewing, because the guy they offer a job to could be off for six months within a year or two (well, hello, isn't that what they do with women these days anyway?). Scarily enough, this comment came from a woman!!
ii) What would I do all day at home? (The reasoning being that women will have got set up in their mother-and-baby groups where the father couldn't easily fit in...)
iii) The salary difference might mean that having the man's salary might be better than having the woman's salary as averages suggest that men's salaries tend to be higher (especially if the guy is a few years older).
What do you think, could the change have a positive impact on a few more women staying on in science and reaching lecturer/group leader positions?
Matthew Salois24 August 2010 at 05:13 PM
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Very interesting. How this plays out over the years will make for a good case study. I tend to think that overall this will have a positive impact on women in academia. There may be many couples out there where the preference is for the mother to remain in her career, but little opportunity for the father to stay at home. This new legislation may change the set of opportunities. I am not inclined to think though that there is going to be much a negtative impact on employers. Perhaps yes, the man being interviewed could leave work for six months, but I do think this really changes the structure of the job market.
Andy Humphrey01 September 2010 at 01:22 PM
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I think this sounds like a step towards equity. The "objections" that Blanka mentioned in her post seem to be a bit ignorant, and not well argued at all by the people who raised them! Objection (i) is going to be outlawed by the forthcoming Equality Act anyway; objection (ii) was presumably made by a man who doesn't actually have children yet and has no concept of the amount of work involved in looking after one; and objection (iii) is a sweeping generalisation that takes no account of the fact that an individual couple will be bound to look at their own circumstances before making any decisions about who stays home, and who works. Sure, in a couple where a man earns much more than his female partner, it might make sense for the man to continue at work - but I know plenty of couples where the female half is the higher earner. Besides which, couples won't necessarily take such a decision on the basis of finances alone.