Here’s One Way We Can Impact Gender Equality Immediately: Offer More Parental Leave

For new parents, family leave policies can make an enormous difference.

I’ve experienced the impact first-hand with my own family. Three of our children, our sons, were born in France and the fourth, our daughter, was born here in the United States. The contrast between the two countries is striking. In France, working mothers typically receive 16 weeks paid time off from the country’s social security fund for the first child and even more for the second. Fathers get 14 days of paid paternity leave. And parents can take additional time on top of that up to three years with partial or no pay. I’m virtually certain my wife and I would not have had three children in four years without such generous support.

In the U.S., on the other hand, there is often no guaranteed time off with pay at all — in fact, it is one of only nine countries globally that provide no paid maternity leave and only 12 percent of American workers have access to paid family leave. Most new parents have to cobble together some combination of vacation time, sick days, disability, and unpaid time off in order to care for their children. And even then, taking time off has been seen as an exception rather than the norm.

When I became a CEO, I faced the challenge and honor of not only trying to support balance and equality within my family but also for the team at my company. I decided that I was in a position to do something about it. My experience showed me that one of the biggest obstacles to both balance and gender parity in the workplace is having enough parental leave, so our team changed our leave policy and began offering 12 weeks of paid parental leave for all, regardless of whether you’re a mom or a dad.

Yet there is still a strong societal expectation that dads won’t take much time off, even if it’s available. As Adam Rhuberg, Upwork’s Director of Analytics, put it eloquently in this piece about taking paternity leave:

“During the pregnancy, I received the routine question all expectant fathers get: ‘Are you going to take any time off?’ … I was able to respond ‘yep, my company gives me 12 weeks fully paid.’ The reaction was always astonishment. ‘TWELVE WEEKS?! That’s awesome! Are you going to take it all?’ That was always the follow-up question, and again, it paints a sad reality — that taking time off that you’re entitled to — whether it’s vacation time, sick time, or virtually unheard of parental leave time — is still not widely accepted.”

How do we promote better gender equality in the workplace? We need to allow both fathers and mothers to take equal time off and we need to also take actions to increase acceptability of actually taking the time off. Sweden wisely introduced a “use it or lose it” approach to its generous policy, which gives 16 months of leave that can be taken by either mothers or fathers and sets aside three of those months for dads, with the other 10 months divided as the parents see fit. As a result, Sweden saw parental leave claimed by mothers decrease from 99.5% in 1974 to 75% in 2015. Clearly, uptake is still lower among mothers but urging fathers to take leave by setting aside “daddy months” and their “use it or lose it” approach is helping.

If the new administration is going to address parental leave by providing six weeks of paid time off, as called for by President Trump, that could be a very welcome development. It should offer that guarantee to fathers as well as mothers. And companies should step up to foster a culture that encourages people actually taking the full time available.

This is about doing the right thing. But there are material benefits, too. With recruiting top talent harder than ever, companies that have implemented generous family leave benefits reap rewards. The rate at which new mothers left jobs at Google dropped by 50 percent when the company increased paid maternity leave to 18 weeks. And there’s a big benefit to retaining employees — the cost of replacing a team member amounts to about 21 percent of the employee’s annual salary.

The administration, as well as U.S. companies, should look to examples like Google, Facebook, and Intel, which show how a robust parental leave policy benefits both U.S. professionals and the company.

Along with instituting more generous parental leave policies for both genders, I think it’s also important to recognize that parental leave is not “time off.” Just look at the stats about his leave that Adam compiled into this amusing and very eye-opening infographic. Better leave policies recognize that parenting, especially of infants, is hard work, but it is also one of the most valuable things we do for the future of our families, our companies and our society.

This post originally appeared on Upwork’s blog here and is inspired by Upwork employee Adam Rhuberg’s article on his parental leave here.