A Time to Value - Proposal for a National Paid Maternity Leave Scheme
Media Pack
Social benefits of paid maternity leave
Encouraging and providing assistance for parents to raise their children benefits all of us. Paid maternity leave is a mechanism which provides assistance to families so that they may better combine work and family responsibilities, to the benefit of the children, the workplace and the community. It may also have flow-on benefits for the fertility rate, community life and social cohesion.
Supporting families and motherhood
Many submissions supported the introduction of a government funded paid maternity leave scheme because of its social benefits. Many observed that children are our future, the next generation of workers and taxpayers and that measures such as paid maternity leave directly contribute to child development.
Women's groups and individuals strongly emphasised the importance of women continuing to reproduce society and argued that this role is currently undervalued. Paid maternity leave was described by other women's groups as a government payment which recognised the dual responsibilities of infant care and employment attachment.
Changing workplace cultures
Submissions from employers, academics and women's groups argued that a government funded paid maternity leave scheme may influence workplace cultures to strengthen acceptance by employers that employees should be supported in balancing work and family. It may also mean that more women access existing family supports and maternity leave entitlements.
Fertility
Australia's fertility rate has declined to 1.7 children per woman, well below the replacement rate. The age at which women have children has risen at the same time. As the South Australia Liberal Women's Council noted, "… children are increasingly seen as a non-option by young Australian women". [1] The interim paper argued that the declining birth rate is in part a result of the financial, professional and social disadvantage encountered by families. [2] This was a view strongly reflected in the submissions. Although nobody concluded that paid maternity leave alone would raise the Australian fertility rate, there was widespread consensus that paid leave, in conjunction with other family-friendly measures, not only helped counteract the economic disadvantage accruing from child bearing but made the combining of work and family more bearable and therefore more likely to be attempted. In the absence of work and family policies, some women's groups as well as academics noted that increasing numbers of young women will choose not to have children, or have fewer children. There was anecdotal evidence however, particularly from women who were their family's primary income earner, that access to a period of paid leave after the birth was important in their decision to have a child.
1.
South Australia Liberal Women's Council, Submission 100, p2.
2. See Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Valuing Parenthood: Options for paid maternity leave, interim paper
2002 HREOC Sydney 2002, p61.
