Why men should be thinking about maternity leave
by Nick Miller
Here’s a suggestion: If you’re a man, why not go into work tomorrow and ask HR or your line manager for your company’s maternity leave policy?
Maybe see if you can find it on the intranet first. It may or may not be there; companies don’t always make these documents accessible. But if you have to ask someone, then deal with the fact that it might sound weird. And then upload the policy here.
Suggestion two: If you’re a man, and you have a female friend who you know is applying for a job at another company, offer to phone up their HR department and ask for their maternity leave policy.
She may not want you to. It may come across as condescending, or even as mansplaining. There might be a chance it could be traced back to her. On the other hand, it might be really useful. Last year, Hacks/Hackers London started a conversation about parental leave. One of the problems that came up in our conversations is that maternity policies are hard to find, especially before a prospective employee has accepted a job. Women in the group expressed being acutely aware of how any such enquiry might come across.
As a man, there’s a risk in making an offer like the one I suggest above. Mostly a risk of sounding weird or out of line. But think about the risk a woman would be taking if she did the same thing. It could be a signal to a manager or potential employer that has implications, even if admitting that sounds like something from the Stone Age.
The manager or employer could now be thinking: “Well, she’s planning on having kids and taking time away from work…Or maybe she’s already pregnant.”
Not all, to be fair, but some managers, would unfortunately go on to think: “So I maybe shouldn’t give her that career-advancing opportunity, in case she can’t see it through.” It might not even be that conscious; but a bias could creep in.
The potential employer may simply decide not to employ them.
So you’ve just done something a woman, currently, cannot do without an agonising weighing of risks and options.
You might just want to do this as an exercise, as a test of corporate culture. You might simply be interested. You might think the disparity between women’s and men’s experience is unfair. This graph, which shows the impact of having kids on a woman’s career compared to a man’s, makes that unfairness particularly clear:
Hardly any guy I know with kids spared much thought about their employer’s paternity leave policy, let alone maternity leave, long before they actually had children themselves.
But I’d argue that doing a bit of investigation ASAP is not just an interesting option, but something you should actively be looking to do.
It presents an opportunity to help people at very little cost to yourself, while encouraging more reasonable maternity leave policies across society is massively in the interests not only of the person who bears the child in a relationship, but also of their partner.
Could your household budget and rent/mortgage demands survive your partner’s income dropped by 10% for six weeks, then 50% for the six months after that? That’s actually considered a generous maternity leave policy.
You could also ask yourself whether you are in a position to step up when your partner has to go back to work, to take a share of the parental duties that can and will lessen your ability to work the hours and places you’re used to, and that your employer probably expects of you?
Think of the woman you love, and the impact on both your lives if she is forced to choose between prioritising your child vs her career. And think about the fact that — for some reason — you probably don’t have to make that choice. And think about how inequity can put strains on a relationship.
(This is not about paternity leave or shared parental leave. That’s a different rant/outrage. And some women want to go back to work quickly after having a child. But some don’t, and have to anyway).
Maybe you’ve not yet started thinking about having kids. But if you ever plan to, or at least suspect you may end up having a child, it is an entirely smart and self-interested position to do what you can to encourage a better corporate culture on maternity leave.
Such a culture will also benefit society as a whole. Happier families. Happier workplaces. Fairer opportunities. Workplaces that work for employees, not just for shareholders.
One way of helping this happen, at the micro level, is to make maternity leave policies publicly accessible. That way, women can be fully informed about a job they may be considering — or the job they already have — risk free. We’ve set up a way to do that anonymously which we’ll share once we have enough information. It might also have the effect of pressuring or persuading corporations to do better.
Nick Miller is the Europe correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
