EQUALITIES COMMISSION MAKES CASE FOR INCREASING SUPPORT FOR INCREASING PATERNITY LEAVE

The UK's Equalities and Human Rights Commission made the case this week for increasing paternity leave for men, though it has catches (link). It is part of their campaign to de-genderise parental care.

It has not been reviewed fully so welcome any thoughts or comments.

It does seem somewhat patronising describing for instance 'By supporting men to be good fathers' as if they are not good fathers already, just because some continue to work through a child's first year.

At least there is some recognition of the value of fathers, now that is a radical change!

Comments

[John Kimble]

The key aspect here is the order of priorites of the commission in terms of what they hope increasing paternity leave will achieve:

"Changes will help tackle the gender pay-gap, bring greater support and social benefits to parents and children, and show modern ways of working are better for the economy."

While there is little doubt that the lack of paternity leave is by far the biggest cause of the small amount of sex discrimination in the workplace, that really shouldn't be the number one priority should it? Yet they have it first on the list - even above the benefits for society!

Sorting out family breakdown and the fact fathers don't have any decent relationship with their children because they work too hard is vastly more important than someone earning an extra fiver a week - at least to any normal person.

The lack of time children spend with their father impacts everyone in society and is easily the biggest reason why society is in such a mess today. The fact women might earn a few more quid is very nice but it is completely immoral and ridiculous to have it at the top of the list of objectives.

It is clear this is that the commission's motivation here is to try to help women in the workplace and they don't really care about men and fathers at all, unless laws to help them can help women too.

Such completely upside down priorities almost never have good outcomes as they're approaching the issue from the wrong perspective.

Also note the language used - nowhere is the lack of paternity leave ever termed "sex discrimination" nor do they point out such how pathetic current paternity leave is in the UK.

They do at least seem to somewhat recognise the important of fathers, for example in terms of better performance at school, but that is still very much hidden away and there just seems to be a general lack of awareness of the seriousness, scale and scope of the problem.

[Nigel]

Well yes surely having two different entitlements for men and women is discrimination, even if one were to agree mothers do take the lead in looking after infants. The answer would be an entitlement that couples could choose to take depending on their own choices. In the few places that have such an arrangement (Denmark and Finland) the majority choose the mother to take the leave but a minority of men do and at least there is equal access to the entitlement.

In recent years I have been pleased to see Beverly Hughes minister for sure start etc. making speech's and authrising work supporting the role of fathers. She is critical of services that ignore and marginalise men and recently suggested that this was because such female dominated services were unwiling to let men play a part. Away from the "grandstanding" of Ms Harman many recognise the truth behind "breakdown britain" even if their politics mean they can't use the words.

Though hardly a supporter of Ms Hughes I was pleased, and even a little surprised, to see her give discrimination against men (rather than just forgetting fathers) as a key factor behind the poor involvement of fathers by services for children.

As instanced by the HRC report having men's and women's entitlements becomes complicated expensive and is discriminatory. What should be on offer is parental leave for the parents to sort out the best use of the entitlement considering all factors in their case(including their employer/s).

This is often resisted by feminists precisely because where such entitlements exist all evidence is that parents choose to divide up the tasks on more "traditional" lines (i.e the mother takes all or most of the leave). Which really exposes their agenda is not about choice or equality but about forcing a change by discrimiatory policy.