New legislation comes into force next month enabling fathers to take extended paternity leave when the mother returns to work. So what does this mean for career women and how will businesses adapt?
It's being hailed as a step in the right direction for women who don't want to lose career momentum when they have a baby and for fathers wanting to play a greater part in their child's upbringing.
From 3 April, new fathers will be entitled to additional paternity leave when the mother returns to work. New dads currently get just two weeks' leave but under reforms created by the last Government, they'll be entitled to up to 26 weeks' extra leave (which must be taken before the child's first birthday) if the mother returns to work after 20 weeks.
Fathers will need to give their employer eight weeks' notice and how much he gets paid depends on how much maternity leave the mother has taken; women are entitled to 39 weeks' Statutory Maternity Pay and whatever she doesn't take, the father will be entitled to the balance.
Statutory pay is £124.88 per week (rising to £128.73 from April) or 90 per cent of his normal weekly earnings, whichever is lower – so, if she takes 37 weeks' leave, the father will get statutory pay for two weeks. So how likely are families to take advantage of the new legislation? Will we be able to push past the cultural stereotypes of men as breadwinners and women as carers? And will this give successful career women more scope to further their careers once they have children?
"As with all new legislation, I don't think we'll see a lot of change initially and there'll be a gradual shift," says Jo Lyon, co-founder of Talking Talent, which specialises in coaching businesses like Vodafone and Pepsico to retain female talent. They’ve also recently launched Talented Dads, a service which helps businesses cope with these new laws.
"It will take a few companies to set the bar for others to follow suit. But it's a really exciting development for women who don't want their careers to end when motherhood begins. These new laws will put both genders on an even keel."
The statistics certainly bear out the notion that if you're a pregnant working woman you can expect a bumpy ride. A 2007 survey by the Equality and Human Rights Commission found that one in six women were afraid of telling their employers they were pregnant and rather startlingly, 70 per cent of recruitment agencies were actually asked to avoid hiring women who were pregnant or likely to become pregnant. And it seems there are further problems once women return to work, post-pregnancy.
The Fawcett Society's 2009 report, Not having it all, reveals that women with partners and no dependant children earn around 9 per cent less than men; that gap widens to 21.6 per cent when a woman has two children and is working full time. Furthermore, around 440,000 women every year lose out on pay rises or promotions as a result of having babies.
So will men want to risk losing out in the workplace in order to stay at home and care for their baby? According to a Talking Talent poll, almost half (46 per cent) of fathers say they would take advantage of additional leave and of course, one of the key factors will be whether businesses offer enhanced paternity pay packages. "Most employers offer enhanced maternity pay to women and if it isn't also offered to men there's potentially an argument that they're being discriminated against," says Tina Rana, employment lawyer with Corren Troen.
In an age where female breadwinners are becoming more common – last year figures showed that the woman is now the main earner in 16 per cent of couples with dependant children - it certainly makes sense for parents to have greater flexibility when it comes to juggling work and family life.
Additional paternity leave is something Lucy Newcombe, Global Corporate Communications Director at Computershare, firmly believes in. "I have two children aged nine and seven, I'm a higher rate taxpayer and I earn more money than my partner. I think it's really important to give families greater flexibility," she says.
With the coalition's recent announcement that it plans to take these reforms even further, the prospect of more stay-at-home dads is something businesses will need to adjust to. In January, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg branded current paternity rules as ‘Edwardian’ and while he supports what the last Government has done he wants a proper system of shared parental leave to be in place by 2015.
One idea being considered is that parents will be able to take leave in chunks. "We support moves to make parental leave more flexible," says Katja Hall, director for employment policy at CBI, a business lobbying organisation.
"This will help families better balance their work and home life. Allowing parents to take ad hoc parcels of leave would make it hard for companies to plan ahead, so we favour parents taking bigger blocks of leave in one go… Any changes will need to be simple to administer and must allow firms to plan ahead to cover staff absences."
By Christina Quaine
