Whether or not they were taken out of context, Kemi Badenoch’s words on maternity leave this week have sparked a slew of articles, posts and comments about whether or not statutory maternity pay has ‘gone too far’. Let me tell you, it hasn’t gone anywhere near far enough. Statutory maternity pay in the UK is £184 a week. Could you live off that, while raising a child?
Yet again, columnists, radio DJs and social commentators are discussing whether we should give women more maternity pay, and how that impacts businesses for better or worse. But they are ignoring the bigger picture. As usual, maternity pay is positioned as a women’s issue. Something that only women are affected by and only concerns women. But the real story here is about parental leave as a whole, and why businesses aren’t giving men more of an incentive to take equal, or frankly any, parental leave.
Solving the gender pay gap sadly isn’t as simple as encouraging more male parents to take leave, but currently, it’s one of the few tools in a limited armoury. If we want to see more women rise to and stay in senior positions, and start to close the pay gap, we need men to shoulder some of the weight of parental leave.
Statistics from the Careers After Babies report found that it takes on average 10 years to close the seniority gap between women who left the workforce to have a baby, and their male counterparts (who may have become parents but probably didn’t take any leave). If that stat doesn’t shock you, I suggest you go back and read it again.
Shared Parental Leave in the UK is really complicated, and very poorly taken up, with the latest data suggesting less than 10 per cent of male parents took up the benefit. In fact, data from Pregnant Then Screwed reveals that a third of men took no paternity leave at all. It’s not working for parents, and it’s impacting women across the board.
As the recent PR Week Gender Pay Gap reporting showed, women are still on fewer boards, hold fewer senior positions and are paid less than men in PR, despite being more numerous. While the PR pay gap sits at around seven per cent, across the UK, the median pay gap is double that at 14 per cent in favour of men.
So yes, please offer your female staff brilliant, enhanced maternity leave, support them on their return to work and understand they may need some flexibility in working hours but will remain just as talented and ambitious as they were before (if not more). But if you’re not also offering competitive, aspirational and potentially game-changing paternity leave alongside that, you’re only looking at half the issue.
Maternity leave has a PR problem, and it’s time for a rebrand.
This article originally appeared on PR Week
