28th January 2011
Nick Clegg's announcement this month that the government will go ahead with
the implementation in April of Labour's plans to allow parents to share between
them six months of maternity leave (three months of it paid) is an important
one – not so much because of the reform itself, which is a largely
symbolic one that will have limited practical effect, but because of what it
says about the future of family policy.
Allowing parents to share leave between them is fine in principle, but for
most families, it will make little economic sense for the father to take time
off work. The gender pay gap means that for the vast majority of households, it
is rational for mothers to stay at home. That is why the government itself
estimates that only 4–8 per cent of eligible fathers (10,000–20,000) will take
up the new right. And while the leave remains transferrable – for mothers
to transfer to fathers – it reinforces assumptions of women as primary
carers, and men as breadwinners.
That is not to deny that increased choice and flexibility for families are
important. But a liberal approach alone will not tackle the structural
inequalities that shape those choices – in particular, the fundamental
inequality in the division of work and care responsibilities between men and
women. To tackle these inequalities, we need a more ambitious and extensive
reform agenda that simultaneously advances childcare, employment rights and
equal pay at work.
At the same time, elsewhere in government policy, spending cuts are pulling
policy backward. Cuts in the childcare element of the tax credit reduce work
incentives, whilst the design of the Universal Credit penalises dual earner
families. Meanwhile, Sure Start centres are being closed or refocused on poorer
families, and despite the welcome expansion of nursery places for two year
olds, support for children in their first year of life is being reduced as the
baby element of the tax credit and Sure Start Maternity Grants are abolished.
For all this, however, Clegg is right to focus on narrowing the gap between
the rights of women and men in our parental leave entitlements. The gap between
what mothers and fathers can take in the UK – currently two weeks
paternity leave paid at the statutory rate for men, versus 12 months for women
(nine months of it paid at statutory rate) – is amongst the highest in the
OECD. Unless fathers have more rights to paid leave, more fundamental
inequalities will persist. The modern route to gender equality is to extend
fathers' entitlements.
Current fiscal constraints mean bigger reforms – affordable universal
childcare, better paid parental leave, and the "use it or lose it"
fathers' leave which Clegg points to – are off the agenda for the
foreseeable future. But it is important that policymakers do not simply account
for these as public expenditure or business costs. With better childcare and
parental leave rights, more women are enabled to work and use their skills
productively after having children, rather than take up poorly paid part-time
work. This increases the employment rate and improves the tax take. Full
employment in the future will rest in large part on these foundations, which
will therefore be fundamental to the affordability of the welfare state.
There is a broader political lesson here too. Across Europe, the decade
before the financial crash saw big increases in the female employment rate,
particularly in the Catholic member states, such as Spain. Countries with
historically low levels of childcare provision, like Germany, took a
"Nordic" turn, significantly boosting their state support for
families. In part, this was motivated by natalist concerns about declining
birth rates. But it also reflected pressure from women voters who were no
longer prepared to trade off their career aspirations against their desire to
have children.
This dynamic is at work in different ways in all advanced economies. It
provides an underlying momentum to reforms that strengthen family friendly
employment rights, childcare provision, and gender equality in the workplace.
The process of securing these goals is most advanced in the Scandinavian
countries, which started down this path in the 1970s. But everywhere the
pressure is the same: families want more rights to flexible work and childcare
support, with more equity between men and women.
That is why the traditional conservative model of male breadwinners and
female care givers, buttressed by marriage tax breaks, is a political dead end.
It has no underlying support in the deeper social and economic trends that are
remaking our society. On this issue, at least, the future is progressive.
Nick Pearce is Director of ippr. This
article was first published by the New Statesman.
