The 36th blog in the SPA's 50-4-50 series is now published.
No 36: Supporting Fathers to Take Parental Leave to Reduce Gender Pay Gaps
by Alison Koslowski
Fewer than 1 in 10 eligible fathers in the UK are taking some amount of shared parental leave,in contrast to close to 10 out of 10 eligible mothers. Clearly then, new mothers and fathers have a very different experience in how they harmonise their work and their family responsibilities. Given this significant difference between male and female employees, it is perhaps unsurprising that most employers are continuing to struggle to close gender pay gaps.
Many social scientists have documented how motherhood contributesto the gender wage gap. In essence, this is because mothers take more time out to care for children than fathers, picking up a motherhood penalty, whilst there is often a fatherhood bonus.This is reflected in leave taking practice.
Parental leave is a policy with the potential to help employers reduce their gender pay gaps but it has yet to be fully embraced by many organisations as such an instrument in their gender equality tool kit.
Parental leave is leave that is available to both mothers and fathers (increasingly including same sex couples) to allow them protected time away from the workplace to care for their young children. It typically follows maternity and paternity leave, but there are as many variations in parental leave design as there are countries.
Continue reading at: http://www.social-policy.org.uk/uncategorized/no-35-supporting-fathers-to-take-parental-leave-to-reduce-gender-pay-gaps/
Other recently published blogs in the series include:
No 35: At harm’s length: when development bureaucracies mean business (Mathilde Maîtrot)
No 34: Shining a light: reporting on equalities and protected characteristics (Sarah Vickerstaff)
No 33: Trade unions and social protection – why the strength of collective organisation matters for social security (Elke Heins)
No 32: Authentic assessment: why real world skills matter in the social policy classroom (Lee Gregory)
No 31: Radical right populism: is it about inequality or ethnic nationalism? (Markus Ketola)
You can find the series in full here: http://www.social-policy.org.uk/category/50-for-50/
Please note that there will now follow a short summer recess. The blog series will resume in September.
Kevin Farnsworth and Zoe Irving
Commissioning Editors
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