Maternity “Leave”
In Canada, as in Australia, the maternity "leave" debate is stifled by a reluctance to value unpaid work.
The phrase "maternity leave" has both positive and negative connotations for the women’s rights movement.
On the one hand, recognizing that women sometimes take time away from paid labor for childbirth and are to be valued anyway is progress. That some women get subidized to stay home with their newborns is progress. It’s a huge leap forward from traditional economic "values".
But on the other hand, the term ‘leave’ is problematic. The meaning of "leave" is a holiday, as in ‘sailor’s leave’. It implies that being home with a baby is not useful. It implies that the right to take care of a baby is a privilege which must be earned through participation in the paid workforce. This is an odd criterion!
The term ‘leave’ (as in ‘by your leave’) also insinuates permission, as in asking a favor. It puts women in the position of begging…groveling…hoping their employer will take pity on them and extend forgiveness for having had a baby.
The tone is wrong.
What we need is recognition that taking care of a baby is no vacation. Rather than a selfish hobby it is real work and vital to an economy. For a society to flourish it must perpetuate itself each generation. All those children must be educated, nurtured, and loved or they will not thrive or become productive adults. Whole nations would collapse is there were no children. The hand that rocks the cradle is vital to the world. The time and money women need to birth and raise children needs to be understood not as a departure from productivity but as useful contribution to society.
Rather than use the term ‘leave’, why not call it ‘maternity benefit’ or ‘maternity allowance’? It isn’t a charity handout, but money earned in recognition of essential services performed. I would also make it universal, tied only to the existence of the newborn child. The birth mother is the most likely recipient but if the adoptive mother or even the father is the primary caregiver then it should be flexible. The point is that the care of a newborn is vital to society and the person providing it is doing vital work.
It is odd to note how internationally government and industry have navigated maternity benefit policies exclusively through the traditional economic paradigm. They have tried to value unpaid work based on the only criterion they understand, which is paid work.
Typically, Mother A gets funding because she earned money last year, Mother B does not because she was already home with a toddler, or health problems or a high risk pregnancy, and Mother C does not get it because she did earn but not for enough hours or as a self-employed person or in some other earning configuration that is not acknowledged. The ludicrous result is gross inequality in maternity benefits systems. Playing favorites between mothers is odd enough, but favoring the ones who earned the most prior to birth is particularly unfair. Playing favorites between children is even more aggravating.
What is needed is a universal benefit tied to one thing – the existence of a baby.
We need to detach maternity benefits from paid labor force participation – it’s simply irrelevant. Yes, I realize that some will say it is unfair to disadvantage women who have grown accustomed to a certain level of earnings. Fair enough. But my plan would not keep it from them. It would provide the benefit to them too, but also to mothers who did not have an income from the paid labor force last year. There would be no losers under such a system. The current system has losers.
Expecting employers to somehow pay for the maternity benefit is unreasonable: not only financially, but philosophically. Small businesses would struggle to afford it and have difficulty holding women’s jobs. Business would not only hesitate to hire women of childbearing age but may resent any who came on board and became pregnant. Penalizing employers in any way for women giving birth could lead to gender discrimination. We have to make it so employers do not have to pay.
Who has to pay, who fairly should pay, is the general taxpayer. All society benefits from doctors, engineers, lawyers and nurses; so all society has an interest in the upbringing of healthy children who will fulfill these roles. It is fair to fund a maternity benefit from general tax revenues. It is the only fair way to do it. Penalizing employers is not fair.
There is a goal in the traditional male-based economy to value supremely what is called ‘attachment’ to the labor force. By this they mean making sure all adults earn or are intending to be earning again shortly, with only small glitches for taking care of babies. This view still looks on paid work as the only really useful role in a nation and on unpaid work as of lower status, pathetically low status and certainly not very useful to the GDP.
We need to confront those biases.
In 1997 in Beijing, all member UN nations signed the Platform for Action to reverse the traditional economic paradigm, and to finally value unpaid work. All members agreed. They promised. Yet 12 years later few nations have yet kept the promise. It is like the promise to eliminate child poverty, another big stage promise that is impossible to keep if we only look at the world through the traditional economy. The real revolution is to value care of children itself, even if it is unpaid. We have to redefine ‘work’ itself to include what is not paid. We have to treat the unpaid sector, usually female, as the full contributors and partners they are to the wellbeing of a nation.
Maternity benefits are a key way to start this revolution. We are not to be forgiven for time with the baby. We are to be valued for time with the baby.
Beverley Smith is a longtime activist for women’s and children’s rights in Canada. She has worked for over 30 years to get her government to value care of the young, sick, handicapped, elderly and dying and has spoken to UN delegates and non-delegates. She networks with international organizations to advance this work and currently edits a free Internet newsletter on care research. Subscribers can contact her at bevgsmith@alumni.ucalgary.ca
