Nick Clegg is about to have another child and has used the occasion to criticise the amount of leave that fathers are entitled to when a baby is born – two weeks compared to 52 weeks for mothers, the biggest difference parents anywhere in the world. It is magnificent to see male politicians declaring on these matters – Nick Clegg’s statement is the strongest appeal ever made in Parliament by a father. (See BBC report.)
This is not only bad news for men who would like to spend more time with their children, it is bad news for women. It may be illegal, but employers know full well that any woman of child bearing age could become a mother and claim 52 weeks off work. Crucially, however, they rest assured that men will not do this. It is men not taking leave that is the problem, not that women are taking leave (after all, unlike men, they have to). And so Government has created an enormous economic incentive for employers to discriminate against women.
An article on www.dad.info examines how workplace culture and economics play out in families, pushing mothers and fathers into different trajectories when a baby is born – the mother into the home and the father into work, where their positions rapidly become entrenched.
The only organisation of influence that has dared to point this out is the Equality and Human Rights Commission. It dared to say that the key thing that needs to change to achieve gender equality is how men work. The economic recession was the excuse used by Government to drop any effort to change the current system, so we can expect to see this new engine driving gender equality in operation at full throttle for the next 10 years. Watch the pay gap go up.
