I know it's not very PC of me as a feminist to question paid parental leave, but I do wonder about government provision of it. When a worker gets sick, who pays for sick leave? The employer. When their mother dies, who pays compassionate leave? The employer. When their son goes into hospital, who pays family leave? The employer. So why is it a government responsibility to provide parental leave, not an employer responsibility? Is it not reasonable to expect employers to provide a minimum parental leave in the same way as they have to provide sick leave, annual leave, long service leave?
When parental leave is provided by the government, I think it moves from being a workplace right to a welfare payment. Which in itself is problematic - do we want family leave to be a worker's right or a welfare payment? And since when have welfare payments been either the equivalent of the minimum wage or an actual wage replacement? Why is parental leave paid by the government not paid at the rate of other income support? I don't really have a problem with a welfare based parental payment either, but what we have is some weird combination of employment conditions and welfare provision. Does sickness allowance get paid at the minumum wage or wage replacement? No. Why not? If one is sick for months but has a job to return to, is it not a very similar position to be in?
Of course, everyone talks about paid parental leave being good for women. Which is sort of is, but it sort of isn't. It's only good for women because women continue to be the primary carers. And despite the occasional non gendered language such as I am stubbornly sticking to, that it is regularly referred to as maternal leave. Saying it benefits mothers is freely admitting that women are expected to continue to be the primary carers. And nothing about these policies is going to change that. Until we address the underlying social issues and assumptions that lead to women doing more than their fair share of the caring work, no amount of "parental leave" will change this situation. It just continues to admit that women care for babies despite clear evidence that babies can bond and be cared for by a whole range of people as long as their are available, loving and responsive to the baby's needs. Saying fathers can't do that is a mix of sentencing women to do the work, excusing men from it and underestimating men's capacities.
Why are family measures in budgets always "good for women"? If we didn't have the dreary expectation that it is women doing the work in families, family benefits would be good for, well, families ... Whilst the current reality sadly is that women do most of the work in families, I don't think it challenges that idea to continually focus on family business as women's business. Women can, should and do have many other aspects to their lives, and strangely enough, quite a lot of them don't involve families. Some women are too young to have them. Have not decided when or if to have them. Have been unable to have them. Chose not to have them. Have been there done that. Have them, but they are not the major source of issues in their lives. So really, when we talk about them being good for women, they are really only good for certain women at certain times of their lives in the current state of labour division. I'm not sure how good that really is.
No comments:
Post a Comment