Maternity Leave's Long, Difficult Labour

The Sunday Age

Sunday March 23, 2008

Carmel Egan and Deborah Gough

In 1978, a young lawyer led a bold push for Australian women to be given maternity leave. Since then, the battle has been to be paid for it. Carmel Egan and Deborah Gough report.

THIRTY years ago Jan Marsh was the most controversial woman in Australia. Howled down in public forums, accosted at airports, lectured in taxis, Ms Marsh was the face of radical unionism and hardline feminism rolled into one.

Working almost alone, the 30-year-old ACTU advocate had prepared and presented one of the most divisive test cases ever taken to the Arbitration Commission: a working woman's right to maternity leave.

It split the union movement, was bitterly opposed by employers and was seen by non-working women as an unwarranted concession to careerists.

Women's groups, however, were angry that paid leave was not included in the claim as it was already available to federal and state public servants.

Ms Marsh won her battle, and the right to six weeks' compulsory and 12 months' unpaid maternity leave was written into the awards of the ACTU's 133 affiliated unions covering 2.3 million women in the private sector.

Reflecting on the case as she retired last week from the vice-presidency of the Australian Industrial Relations Commission, Ms Marsh defended the decision not to push for paid leave at the time despite using her opening address to champion its cause.

"We had a better chance taking it one step at a time," she said.

"It was quite controversial but the argument for unpaid leave was the first step.

"I would have expected paid maternity leave to have been more widespread (now) given that it was first raised 30 years ago, notwithstanding the source of the payment."

Thirty years later the issue still provokes heated debate.

Only a lucky minority - about one-third - of Australian women are able to access paid leave when they have a baby.

Most are left to cobble together other entitlements they may have stored up, such as holiday and long-service leave, in order to support themselves and their families through their newborn's first weeks.

Within nine months, 40% will return to work and 10% return in less than three months.

Despite promising to extend unpaid parental leave entitlements to two years, with mothers and fathers given the option of splitting that time, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has refused to indicate where he stands on universal paid maternity leave.

Last month Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard referred paid maternity to the Productivity Commission with instructions to report back in a year's time.

Disappointed women's equity activists see this as a delaying tactic.

Supporters, including many academics and the Business Council of Australia, see it as a step towards what they now believe is inevitable. The commission will look at the economic and social costs and benefits of paid maternity, paternity and parental leave.

The terms of reference include exploring what employers now pay; it will also identify pay models and their interaction with social welfare systems; assess the cost and benefits to business; examine women's workforce participation, employment and earnings; investigate post-birth health of the mother and development of children from newborns to two years; and analyse financial pressures on families.

International studies link an early return to work to increased health risks for women, such as chronic tiredness, failure to fully recover from the birth, and the higher incidence of postnatal depression. There are greater risks to the baby's health and breastfeeding generally stops.

According to Dr Sara Charlesworth, senior research fellow at the Centre for Applied Social Research at RMIT University, women's links to their workplace and continued career prospects are optimised if they return to work after nine months.

Australia and the US are the only OECD countries without compulsory government-funded paid maternity leave. However, five large US states, including California and New York, do offer publicly funded maternity leave equivalent to the European Union statutory minimum.

In 1995 the EU announced minimum conditions for social partners' parental leave in its Charter of Fundamental Rights.

According to Dr Charlesworth, Australia could learn much from Britain, which has added to the EU model and is now among the world's most generous.

British mothers get 39 weeks' paid maternity leave, with six weeks at 90% of their previous wage and the 33 remaining weeks at a flat rate equivalent to $270 a week. The British Parliament intends to extend that to 52 weeks by May 2010.

The Swedes receive 18 months' paid parental leave; Italians get 47 weeks; and Russia 140 days.

According to women's groups and many academics, Australia's inability to pay its mothers is rooted in historical male workforce domination and sexism. Motherhood, they say, still means a substantial loss of earnings, demotion and insecurity in the workplace for many women.

"(The current system) is a result of a long history of male-dominated industrial relations and politics," said author, activist and director of Centre for Life and Work, Barbara Pocock. "Boys don't push out babies; if they did we would have Rolls-Royce maternity leave."

Part of Australia's lethargy is explained in a Monash University study co-written by Dr JaneMaree Maher, director of the Centre for Women's Studies.

The study found that most women believed they were entitled to maternity leave and only found out about entitlements after they fell pregnant.

Many also found when they returned to work that the nature of their jobs had changed, their clients had been taken from them or, worse still, they were made redundant while on leave.

Dr Lyndall Strazdins, a social scientist at the Australian National University, believes part of Australia's problem is that we view family life as somehow not linked to work life.

"There has been a devaluing of what it means to care for children and what it really requires and that's very connected to a gendered view of what's important and what's not - what's work and what's family," Dr Strazdins said.

The Australian Institute of Family Studies has found financial uncertainty contributes to women delaying motherhood and reducing the number of children they have.

Dr Deborah Brennan, NSW Social Policy Research Centre professor, paints a picture of two classes of mothers in Australia: those in the public sector, in large workplaces or in unionised occupations; and the rest.

"Scientific knowledge about babies in their first months of life should also be driving Australian policy, but my sense is that it is not - not yet," she said.

YOUR SAY

What are your experiences of maternity leave, or the lack of it? Have you been forced to return to work because of the lack of paid leave, or are you a small business worried about the introduction of leave? We welcome your stories.

Write to us at sunday@theage.com.au

A QUESTION OF FAIRNESS

WHAT WE HAVE

??52 weeks? unpaid maternity leave.

? Baby bonus rises from $4258 to $5000 on July 1. THE FACTS

? About 270,000 working mothers take maternity leave in a year.

? Most women take just 34 weeks.

? Two-thirds of women are

not entitled to any paid maternity leave, but some take other forms of leave.

? Fewer than one in five women get the 14 weeks? paid maternity leave recommended by the International Labor Organisation.

THE WINNERS Public servants, academics and those working for larger companies, usually between two weeks and 52 weeks with some form of pay.

THE LOSERS Workers in retail, hospitality, child care, textile, clothing and footwear, and small business employees, non-unionised workplaces, the self employed and those who had not worked longer than one year with their employer.

SOURCE: AUSTRALIAN BUREAU OF STATISTICS

WHAT THEY WANT

Australian Council of Trade Unions Government to use an indexed baby bonus paid weekly for 14 weeks to create paid maternity leave for all women. Employers to top up the pay to reflect a mother's replacement weekly pay, at an average cost to employers of about $2000 for each case (based on three-quarters of women earning less than $45,000 pa).

Business Council of Australia Public funding of paid maternity leave.

The BCA believes a universal public scheme of paid maternity leave would help address skills shortages, an ageing workforce and demographic challenges. Pru Goward, former federal sex discrimination commissioner: Her Valuing Parenting report in 2002 recommended 14 weeks' publicly funded maternity leave at the minimum wage.

Women's Electoral Lobby Paid maternity leave for all Australian women, at least equal to International Labor Organisation recommendation of 14 weeks.

Council of Small Business of Australia Supports the international standard of 14 weeks' government-funded leave.

Work and Family Policy round table (prominent Australian academics) Government-funded 14 weeks' paid maternity leave for all working women initially, with leave increasing to up to 52 weeks.

© 2008 The Sunday Age

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