From the Philadelphia Inquirer:
True or False: The United States is one of only four countries in the world that does not provide some form of paid leave to new mothers?
Believe it or not, the answer is true, with Papua New Guinea, Swaziland and Liberia sharing this dubious distinction, out of 173 countries surveyed in a Harvard/McGill study. In combination with the general lack of family supports in the United States, it signals a national crisis.
American mothers have entered the workforce in record numbers in the last 30 years, with nearly three-quarters of all mothers now in the labor force. Policies and programs to support families and caregivers have not caught up with this reality. In more than half of two-parent families, both parents are employed. This is an unavoidable reality for many people: Two-parent families that try to subsist with only one wage earner are seven times more likely to end up living in poverty than those with two employed parents. Times have changed; work expectations have changed, but our policies and support structures have not.
Citizens in many other countries routinely enjoy the benefits of guaranteed paid sick days; affordable, high-quality child care and health care; and paid family leave. Here, however, where such supports are often difficult or impossible to find, families struggle in relative isolation to provide for their needs – burdened by guilt, despair and the incorrect belief that it is somehow their fault, their personal cross to bear.
Early feminists, chipping away at the “glass ceiling,” urged women to “see the personal as political.” Now it’s time to expand that message to all parents and caregivers. Time to demonstrate the political will necessary to bring about the kinds of reform in child care, health care, education and labor-force policy that will bring this country up to par with its economic counterparts worldwide. It is the right thing to do, the smart thing to do, and there are plenty of nations showing us the methods and the results. …
Full text available here. Via Kiki Peppard.
Update: The referenced study is accessible here.
What did the report say about Australia? There is no mandated employer or government provided maternity leave here, only a small Centrelink handout and some later tax benefits.
I added a link to the report above, but it doesn’t break things down by countries. One of the sources it sites is this report:
http://unstats.un.org/UNSD/demographic/products/indwm/ww2005/tab5c.htm
This indicates that Australia provides 52 weeks of unpaid leave. Is that incorrect?
That’s exactly right Ann – Australia mandates 12 months of unpaid leave (if a woman has been working at a job for at least 12 months already) – but no paid leave.
Then it sounds like the “soundbite” at the beginning of the article is not entirely correct. I’ll send the author an e-mail to let her know.
I just looked at the soundbite – there’s a bit of a qualification in there that the Inquirer left out.
“the fact remains that the U.S. guarantees no paid leave for mothers in any segment of the work force, leaving it in the company of only 4 other nations: Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea, and Swaziland.”
Australia does have a short period of paid maternity leave (12 weeks, I think) offered for a very limited number of jobs in the public service.