Do Family-Friendly Policies Help Women?

~ Laura

Claire Lundberg and Matthew Yglesias have two excellent articles about the limits of family-friendly policies. Sometimes these programs are so expensive, that employers simply do not employ women.

Last week, Mary Ann Mason in the New York Times talked about her research on the dismal outcomes for women in academia. She said that family-friendly policies, like  “paid family leave for both mothers and fathers, a flexible workplace, a re-entry policy, pay equity reviews, childcare and dual-career assistance — would help to level the playing field.”

Judging from my experience and the experience of my female academic friends, those policies only help some. They help those who have secured the jobs. They don’t help those who can’t find a job in the first place or can’t find a job in the same cities as their spouse. I have several friends (mostly women, but there is one guy, too) who have walked away from tenure-track jobs, because their spouses and children lived several states away.

So, what’s the solution? Matt says the answer is to not make employers responsible for paying for childcare or maternity leave, but that the federal government should assume that responsibility. That makes sense.

Published by Laura

5 thoughts on “Do Family-Friendly Policies Help Women?”

  1. In Canada, maternity/parental leave is paid for using unemployment benefits. The employer is not responsible. To qualify for the benefits a parent must have worked a certain number of hours in the year up to the birth of the child. The benefits top out at 55% of your insurance earnings up to a max of insurable earnings of $47,400. It’s a good system. For more information, see:

    http://www.servicecanada.gc.ca/eng/ei/types/maternity_parental.shtml

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  2. Are there any studies in bias in hiring in Canada? How do the details differ from maternity leave policies in Sweden and Germany (I hear bad things about the German system, which guarantees long leave, but, I think, doesn’t pay for it, but I’m not sure of the details).

    Yglesias has a nice article on a pamphlet by McDonalds and Visa on how you’re supposed to budget on a McDonald’s salary: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/07/15/mcdonalds_budget_no_food_no_heat.html

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    1. BJ, I’m not aware of any studies — doesn’t mean they don’t exist though. I will point out that only part of the one-year maternity leave is specifically for mothers (17 weeks). The rest (35 weeks) can be split between the parents. I know a number of families where both parents take off time when their child was born.

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  3. I’ve argued for years that maternity leave should be a form of unemployment leave and covered the same way, as Gem advocates. I can’t imagine that this type of system would result in any more hiring bias than what already occurs in the States.

    I remember when I had my first pregnancy, I was working in IT consulting (non-travel). My boss was supportive to my face – but he posted my job. He could not get by without someone in my role, and he was convinced I would quit. To be fair, over half the women at that company who took maternity leave gave notice within two weeks of returning. (They couldn’t admit they weren’t planning to return beforehand, or they’d lose the benefit.)

    These days I am a team manager and I’m currently dealing with multiple vacancies caused by either pregnancy, or by young women in India getting married and quitting work abruptly. As an employer it’s a total pain, very expensive, and I can see where lots of people just want to avoid it completely if they can.

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    1. Possible solution: After you come back to work from baby leave, keep muttering about divorce and/or an unemployed husband so that you’re boss will think you can’t quit.

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