Anonymously they say what we have all known for years.

[divadee]

I saw this article today and I have to say it didn't surprise me. Upset me and made me angry but it only says what women have known for years and years.

Sucks to be a woman but get over it
so long as I have breath I’ll not be passively acquiescing or getting over it

I also acknowledge the contribution of other women who didn’t just suck it up.
Because they wouldn’t get over it legislation was imposed to try address inequality

make my blood boil wholeheartedly agree

The reason the take up is only 2% is a company can easily fire a man taking his legal right as shared partiality leave has no were near the same protections as martinity leave does.

Yes they have a legal right to take leave of up too a year in the case of the mother if she is let go after the leave is over its up to the company to prove its not sex discrimination via pregnancy. In contrast if a man is let go for taking his legal right to leave there is on paper some safegaurds but it is vastly easier to let him go for taking said leave then the woman.

I would love the Swedish modal were both parents take leave and both have the exact same protections same rate of pay (as in the leave entailment pay) And due to this the uptake of leave is much greater balance.

In other countries both men and women take time to raise children.

So don't take time off work to have children

you realise you've missed the point by a mile, right?

My advice to women (and to men) is to strive for equality in your own partnership and then you’ll find it easier to feel equal in your work life too.

Women- hand over some of your ML to the father of your child. Ok, you might not benefit quite as much financially, but it’s an important principle- you are making a stand that your child is as much the father’s responsibly as your own.

Consider returning to work earlier rather than taking a whole year- particularly if you intend to get pregnant again soon. The reality is that some women do take a year off, then return briefly, then take another year off. Yeap, it’s your legal entitlement. But if you only look at your own personal circumstances rather than the bigger picture, then you can’t turn round and blame employers for being wary. We too have someone in our workplace (a school) who has actually been in work for just 2 terms since 2014. All legit - but what an impact on the pupils and the employer ... they are unable to appoint a permanent member of staff so the pupils have had a succession of temporary teachers.

And finally- raise your daughters and sons to aspire to having good careers and, if they choose to have children, to see it as much their responsibility as their partners.

Many of us women in our fifties are truly amazed at how parental rights have improved massively over recent years. My eldest is only in her 20s but when I had her, ML was 3 months and paternity leave non existent! Dads had to either take annual leave or (in many cases including my own) be back at work the day after the birth. Enjoy these improved conditions; make them work for mums and dads- but don’t abuse them, because ultimately that does no one any favours. I find it truly sad that so few dads take up shared leave when it’s something my generation would have given our right arm for.

@LipstickHandbagCoffee

The ONS.

after stripping out all other factors including age, profession and employer size, women are nearly 50% more likely to have sick days

Interesting. In my profession in the healthcare sector it is very women heavy. We work 12 hour shifts and if you are off on Monday sick it is counted as 3.5 days sick leave. I wonder if digging deeper into the data would be revealing.
But it is as it is.
I haven’t taken a sick day in 4 years. My partner has his own office and goes in when he’s sick for a few hours and hides away from everyone. Or works from home. Again he’s got s more senior job so can do that. I work with people so can’t work if I have flu.

Thanks I’ll take a look at the link,wasn’t aware of that data

The worst hiring mistake I ever made was a woman I interviewed when she was 8 months pregnant. Great skills and experience, but has basically spent the past six years on paid maternity leave (not in UK- she gets 26 weeks fully paid. She had to have six months service so had the baby, didn’t get paid maternity leave, but came back pregnant, went straight out on paid sick leave with PND and then got full maternity pay for next and subsequent maternity leaves). She’s had a large number of children since she started with us. She has not worked a single day since 2014.

People like the employee in this scenario are exactly why people are wary of employing women of a child bearing age. I was planning on having kids at around 30 but circumstances changed and I changed jobs. I'm now 32 and planning on starting to try next year when I've been at this place for three years, I wanted to have earned my place here before taking any form of maternity leave from what is a very small company.

If a company pays for an employee to gain qualifications etc, there is usually an agreement that if employee then leaves company within a certain period, they will repay the cost to the company.

Why not have similar for maternity leave?

"Why not have similar for maternity leave?"

Because someone will cry sexism. People are afraid of being tied up in litigation.

Why not have similar for parental leave?

Enhanced parental leave payments are normally repayable if you don’t return to work in exactly that way araiwa. The problem is that some women will then game the system by returning to work for the necessary six months in order to avoid repayment (or whatever) and then quit immediately. It’s difficult to blame them given the sums at stake, but it’s an absolute nightmare scenario for the employer because you’ve had to release the maternity cover (who might otherwise have been hired as a full time replacement), you’ve had double the disruption and you’ve possibly had a disaffected and halfhearted employee for six months.

Exactly thomasnightingale.

The teacher I referred to in my school is on her 3rd maternity leave, having returned from the 2 previous ones pregnant, so has only actually been in school for two terms in several years. That’s a whole cohort of pupils whose learning has been disrupted. They’ve had a succession of temporary teachers, unsurprisingly some have been not particularly committed because they have no security. It’s also had an impact on other staff, who have shifted around classes to try to minimise disruption, but ultimately, those pupils haven’t had a good deal and if I were a parent I’d be less than impressed.

And yes I know the post holder is acting entirely legally and can take as many maternity leaves as she wants, return for the minimum time, and actually may even jack her job in anyway after the final one!

And this is public sector... god knows what it must feel like for a private business, particularly a small one.

My point is: with rights come responsibilities, and women who only consider their own individual rights rather than also seeing the bigger picture, are doing a disservice to everyone else

In quite a few places there is a clause, you have to pay back if you don't go back for at least 3 months.

@Cyw2018 From what I remember the UK birth rate is already below replacement level.

My point is: with rights come responsibilities, and women who only consider their own individual rights rather than also seeing the bigger picture, are doing a disservice to everyone else

Well that's fine, except that the employer is not held to the same 'responsibilities' as the employee.

I work in consultancy. If it no longer suits my employer to employ me (i.e. the market slows or I stop making them sufficient money) they'll find a way to get rid of me, quick sharp. There'll be no 'responsibility' to me or my family, they'll act entirely in their own interests.

That's fine, that's what I signed up for. And I'll do the same thanks very much.

Due to circumstances out of my control I started a new job at 36. I was pregnant 3 months into the job (after trying for more than a year previous to taking it). No way was I waiting, given my age and fertility.

I worked my ass off for them while I was pregnant. I'll be back when my child is 8 months and I'm committed to them in the long term. My conscience is clear.

Of course an employer isn’t held to the same responsibilities as the employee. No one said they were.

My point is, it works both ways.

A lot of people talk nowadays about wanting employers to be family-friendly. They are less likely to be so if in their experience, employees will play the system for their own maximum personal gain without regard for the impact on the company.

@araiwa

"Why not have similar for parental leave?"

Can I ignore the question and address the change of wording. Neither mothers nor fathers (I'll keep looking for the well done study I read) want equal parental leave.

No one beyond a few militant feminists think enforced paternal leave will benefit anyone.

Women push a baby from their vagina. They breast feed and their body readjusts to being not pregnant and they bond in ways fathers won't and go through all kinds of things unique to motherhood. Life isn't and shouldn't be equal because men and women aren't the same.

I think it depends on the level of role doesn't it?
If the role involves so many widgets per hour or is relatively unskilled then an employer will only see the numbers vs the maternity leave. A preference in this case is understandable but that is what the legislation is for: to prevent that preference being acted out.
My own experience of recruiting and retaining specialist scientist is that a recently married woman is less likely to move on quickly than a man of the same age. In a small company it wasn't onerous to offer flexibility and inducements to get women to want to come back to work and want to stay. Only the bosses who can't see the benefit won't offer the inducements to encourage women.

In my experience, businesses do very little indeed that's not either in their own interests or mandated by law.

Even those touted as 'family friendly' usually introduce these policies because they absolutely have to to keep good female staff.

That's perfectly understandable, given that our culture prioritises capitalist enterprise above most other things. No one questions it.

But I don't feel bound by a sense of personal responsibility to a company that has no personal responsibility (beyond what I can do for them financially) to me.

I’d have given my right arm for shared parental leave, not because I’m a militant
Feminist, but because my children have 2 equally loving parents to bond with and care for them. From day one, my dh was as capable as I was of looking after our babies. The only thing he couldn’t do was feed breast milk directly from the breast. (And actually I was a long term breastfeeder despite returning to work when ds was 3 months old, so shared parental leave doesn’t need to impact on bf, especially as women now could take much longer ML and still hand some leave over to the father.)

If a woman sees the whole of parental
Leave as her ‘right’, if she isn’t interested in having a career, or if she believes that simply by virtue of having a penis, the father should work, and by virtue of having a vagina, the mother should be the sole carer- then she should just say so. Don’t dress it up as a biological difference that’s so enormous that a father can’t take a few months to care for his child

I'm grateful that I work for a company where most of the top members of staff are women including the CEO. We pick the right people for the job regardless of whether they are male or female.

As an aside, I started work at the same time and in the same role as a man. I don't have children and won't ever, he had a step child and then one of his own and had so much time off work tending to the children etc when compared to me. So in that case if they'd picked him over me instead of us both, they'd have lost out big time!

with anonymity I'll admit that the sex of a potential employee as well as their relationship status and other protected characteristics is taken into account when they're getting the job or not

I’m a boss. I employ people. I would say that this attitude betrays you as very shortsighted and not terribly commercially savvy or divergent in your thinking.

If you discount women of childbearing age and other people with protected characteristics, you make the talent pool you’re fishing in more and more shallow and homogenised, until the only people working for your business are likely white, middle class men.

Boooooring. How are you going to get cut through in the marketplace if everyone working for you has exactly the same cultural references and type of education as the people working for your competitors? Where’s the different perspective and new thinking that will help set you apart?

Bosses just can’t afford to be so myopic in today’s climate. Those who are won’t last.

@TheDailyMailisTrumpCock

You were too busy being indignant to read the rest of my reply. Are you really in a position of authority? I'll copy and paste it for you if it will help. Don't worry. There was another frothy poster who said I wouldn't be able to sell my products to the next generation with my attitude. I guess illiteracy is common amongst the frothy.

I'm a Principal. Mostly men as Primary Teachers, mostly women as Secondary Teachers and both Primary and Secondary Heads are women.

I don't discount women of childbearing age, I hold it against them. There's a subtle but extremely important difference.

@fattonotsofat

Why are you grateful? It sounds sexist to me or do you only think so when the majority of the board are male?

Time to think through your ideas a little more closely.