The Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, proposed by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Rep. L. DeLauro in February, 2019, would be a major breakthrough in the realm of paid parental leave. This bill, if passed, would provide all individuals throughout the United States the chance to take twelve weeks of leave at 66% of their typical wages. While this bill is revolutionary and would provide families with the opportunity to take time off to support their families, more needs to be done in order for both men and women to start reaping the benefits of a paid leave policy.
In a society that strives to overturn gender stereotypes, there continues to be a division in the expectations placed on men and women. One of the most pressing infrastructures of today is the system of not providing new fathers with mandatory paid leave after the birth or adoption of their child(ren). In order to begin building a gender-balanced society, we must petition the government to extend the universal family leave policy further to mandate paternity leave.
Gender roles continue to plague men and women across the nation, holding individuals to particular unreasonable standards based primarily on women as the primary caregivers of their children and men as the breadwinners. Women are often the individuals who request or take parental leave following the birth or adoption of their child, while men continue work as usual. Quite often, maternity leave reinforces the gender stereotypes already present in society, portraying male parents as more dedicated to their careers than their female counterparts, merely because they did not take time off work following the birth or adoption of their child.
Some larger companies, such as Dove, have begun offering paid paternity leave to their employees, but the system contains flaws that not only keep men from taking this time off of work, but also negatively impact their relationships with their children and perpetuate their female partners’ role as the primarily responsible parent. Male resistance to paternity leave stems, in part, from the fact that 57% of men in the United States, according to a survey conducted by Deloitte, have the mentality that taking time off after a child’s birth shows a lack of dedication to their careers. Not taking time off after the birth of their child negatively impacts the closeness between a father and his child, as well as the child’s overall health. This mentality negatively impacts not only a father’s bonding time with their child, but paints the higher proportion of women who use or demand leave in a negative light.
Based on this common male mentality, women are seen as less dedicated to their careers than their male counterparts. Their time away from work effectively strengthens the gender roles already present in the workforce, leading employers to view male employees as more reliable, constant assets to their companies, and female employees who take family leave as fickle and undedicated to their work. Criminalizing women for taking parental leave decreases women’s pay by an average of seven percent when they return to work, and is one of the primary factors behind why 70 percent more men hold executive roles by midway through their careers than do women. The only means of battling the issues mentioned above is to require paid paternity leave of all employees, thus destigmatizing taking time off and ensuring that male employees will have guaranteed job security when they return to work.
Several progressive companies such as Boston-based Humanyze have implemented a system of obligatory paternity leave to foster greater equality among their employees and to make their environment conducive to more balanced workers, and have found its benefits to be exceptional. Both fathers and mothers working for the company are offered six months of full-time pay to stay at home and bond with their families, which employees have reported to have enduring improved relationships with their partner and their child. It is in this environment, without financial constraints, the roles of women and men within the household can become significantly more unified, thus creating minimized gender roles. For this reason, mandatory paid paternity is the key that we are looking for in our quest for creating gender equal society for future generations.
As a member of the next generation in the workplace, this issue is of the utmost importance to me. Mandating leave after the birth of a child for both parents, not only for women, prevents women from losing traction in their progression up the ranks in their company, put them at a more even playing field for equal wages and treatments with their male coworkers. When I was born, my father was not able to take paternity leave, for fear of our family running low on funds and as assurance that he would be able to maintain his positional standing in the company. By doing so, my mother assumed the task of raising us most of the time and caring for the home, continuing gender roles. Many families fall into this same pattern, and if it is not disrupted by implementing systems such as mandatory paternity leave, women will continue to be treated and paid in an inferior manner to their male counterparts.
Required paternity leave would not only unite families and minimize gender roles in specific cases. It would allow for families to establish a precedent of equality both in the workplace and within the home. In the workplace, men and women would both be absent after the birth of a child, an occurrence that is currently experienced by women, disproportionately exposing them to obstacles in their advancement and reputation within their company. In the home, it would allow parents the opportunity to share equally in child rearing duties over the course of the family leave, allowing them to establish gender equal habits that would likely extend beyond the time of the paid leave.
Therefore, obligatory paternity leave in all companies will be more effective at establishing a more gender equal society than if these companies were to take comprehensive action in the form of gender equality policies. When policies encouraging parental leave of both genders are simply put into place within companies, women’s likelihood of advancement in their work positions is only increased by .33%, an abysmal improvement from the more outdated policy of only mothers receiving paid leave (if they receive paid leave at all). When their partners take paternity leave, however, women are typically able to go back to work sooner than if they were the primarily responsible parent and/or the only one of the partners on leave.
Fathers who have experienced mandatory paternity leave have found greater gender equality within their families. Jim McMillan, a second-time father working for Ernst &Young, was a member of the inaugural group of fathers at the company who were offered mandatory paternity leave. Throughout his leave, his wife reported lower stress levels when she returned to her legal career after maternity leave. This increased sense of ease was derived in large part from the strong co-parenting that her and her spouse had established in their time at home together during the first several months of their baby’s life. She felt that her husband began preparing her children for school and cleaning the house whenever she was at work and unable to do so.
Mandatory paternity leave, in addition to mandatory maternity leave for new mothers, has the opportunity to level the playing field in the workplace in an incredible way. Companies such as Dove, Ernst & Young, and Humanyze have reported great success with this practice thus far, and the individual employees for these businesses are reporting greater satisfaction at work and at home.
Imagine the impact on employee satisfaction and gender equality if all companies were expected to provide their male and female workers with required paid leave? In the two generations, the United States could be significantly less patriarchal. Currently, only about 6.4% of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are women. The lack of female representation in senior positions at large companies is further proof that we, as the American public, need to petition our companies to take action against gender inequality. We need to stand up and demand mandatory paid leave in companies throughout this nation, as it is quite possibly the most effective means of abolishing gender expectations in the workplace and at home.
Luckily for the American public, Gillibrand and DeLauro have drafted the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act that would mandate paid leave for men and women in all 50 states for up to twelve weeks. While this proposal, if passed, would greatly benefit the people in this nation and create greater job satisfaction overall, it will likely maintain current stereotypical gender roles in society, as more women would continue to take leave than men. Therefore, should paid family leave be required throughout the United States, we must push the government further to consider an option that would both support employees and support society at large—mandating leave after the birth or adoption of a child.