Nowadays, the majority of pregnant women I know take close to a year off, during which they are entitled to statutory maternity pay for up to 39 weeks. They return with the expectation and right to have their old job back after 52 weeks.Except that, when they do return, many of them don't want exactly their old job back. They want the same role but moulded into a time frame that suits family life better.They want to investigate four-day weeks, flexitime, jobshares, and they often then have another baby and are entitled to take another year off.

That's Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman writing here (Daily Mail, 11/11/09).  That makes the third high-profile British businesswoman in the last three weeks to warn about the danger of ever-increasing employment benefits for women in the U.K.  And to Shulman, that's got nothing to do with fairness.  In fact, her rather long piece never mentions the radical inequality in British parental leave laws between men and women.  There, women are entitled to 39 weeks paid leave; men get two.

But however dismissive Shulman is of fathers and their interest in being with their newborns, she nevertheless has a point.  It is this: greater women's workplace entitlements endanger women in the workplace.  As the headline of the article asks, "Year Long Maternity Leave, Flexi Hours, Four Day Weeks... Why Would ANY Boss Hire a Woman?" 

Shulman herself wonders,

But what I don't understand is the idea that you should be able to keep exactly the same job, with all the advantages that entails, and work less for it, regardless of how that affects the office or colleagues.

As an editor at Vogue with a staff that's 90% women, those entitlements are an everyday problem for her.  She quotes an unnamed friend and small business owner who calls the "maternity situation" "a nightmare."  The friend goes on to describe what happens when a woman takes maternity leave.

'Of course what happens is that the younger ones in the office step up to fill the gap - and,' she whispered, 'they're cheaper.

'At the end of a year, how much do I really need that person back?'

Shulman picks up that thread to ask, 

And how fair is it for a deputy to be promoted to cover a maternity leave only to be demoted back to their box on your return after a year?

The bottom line for Shulman comes in the words of fashion entrepreneur, Anya Hindmarch,

'If we are not careful (and I speak as a mother and an employer), maternity leave and benefits will become too biased towards the mother and not considerate enough for the employer.

'In which case, it can start to work against women as it becomes too complicated and expensive to employ them. To me, it shouts of shooting ourselves in the foot.'

Notice that she has no concern at all for fathers, only women and employers.  Indeed, Shulman refers to men only once and then ominously as those whom employers may hire instead of women because they don't take leave.  But again, she has a point; existing maternal leave laws can only result in marginalizing women in the workplace as employers do the obvious thing - hire men.

My guess is that this is going to be tough nut to crack.  Will the British Parliament abolish parental leave altogther?  Not likely.  Even if it increases leave for fathers or gives a certain amount to couples who can split it any way they choose, the probable result will still be men staying mostly at the office and women taking most of the time off to care for the new baby.  So employers will be faced with the same issue - hire the woman whom you figure will take leave or hire the man you figure won't.

In the end, the solution may come down to this simple concept,

But, hang on a minute, for many of us a full-time job means working full-time.
 
 

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 15th, 2009 at 10:03 am and is filed under Men, Women and Work. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.