US government project campaigns for fathers to take time to be a dad

Image from fatherhood.gov

Image from nytimes.com

Image from fatherhood.gov

Maybe the Irish government could learn a thing or two?

Fears over longer maternity leave could lead to increased discrimination of female job applicants

The European parliament will vote on a proposal to extend paid maternity leave to 20 weeks today.

The controversy surrounding the proposal is a prime example of why introduction of shared parental leave and paternity leave is so crucial to gender equality.

The main arguments against the proposal is the burden of cost to businesses already struggling in the current economic climate, and that the proposal is ‘ludicrous interference in bosses’ freedom to employ women’.

UK MEP Godfrey Bloom contribution to the debate was the following:

About five and half years ago I caused a furore by suggesting that any small businessman with his brain in the right place would be mad to employ a woman of child-bearing age.

Since that time it’s got worse and got worse (…).

We have an extraordinary situation where we have young women, desperately keen to get into work, desperately keen to work for companies, especially small companies which are the driving force of the UK economy, and we have employers who are too terrified to take them on.

In the same manner, Irish Small and Medium Enterprises chief executive Mark Fielding said to the Irish Times today that most of the organisations’ members do not pay maternity leave, and that doing so ‘would have the effect of making employers discriminate against employing young women’. Godfrey Bloom said the same thing about the UK: ‘We’re making it (…) almost impossible for small businesses to employ young women, which is something they want to do’.

As much as one can understand the challenges for small businesses to have employees taking leave, these challenges should not under any circumstances translate into direct discrimination of women.

Most children have two parents. This is not reflected in leave entitlements. As a result, women are only welcome job applicants if they can be classified as too old to have children.

Men are discriminated against in leave entitlements, and women are discriminated against in work recruitment processes. And with that, Ireland acquires the neat sum of minus six million points in the race of moving away from those restricting gender roles.

Quote of the Week

‘Was it the right time [to become a father]? Paternity leave, taking a child on to licensed premises -such privileges were still being fought for then’

Blake Morrison in ‘When is the right time to have a baby?’, The Guardian Weekend 09.10.10.

Ah, the bliss of living in a country where the fight for paternity leave is a thing of the past.

Spanish ‘Babysitter Grandparents’ Go on Strike

Illustration from stock.xchng

An unusual strike is planned in Spain for next Wednesday.

A call has gone out for grandparents to go on strike to ‘prove that they are a key part of the way [Spain] functions’ and to illustrate that ‘grandparents provide the childcare that working parents cannot give and the state does not offer’.

In Spain, where work hours are long, part-time or flexible jobs are hard to come by, and childminders are expensive, the most common solution for childcare has become unpaid care by grandparents.

According to the Guardian, half of all Spanish grandparents look after their grandchildren every day.

In Ireland, only 30 per cent of all children under the age of 12 use non-parental care, as mothers often take substantial time off work to look after their children.

Relying on unpaid relatives for childcare is however still one of the main solutions for Irish parents returning to work, with around nine per cent of all Irish children aged 12 and under being looked after by unpaid relatives.

Facilitating Dads to be Dads isn’t Quite the Irish Way

Illustration from Stock.XCHNG

Last week, the Independent had an interesting article about dads being sidelined in maternity wards. The article describes a pilot scheme in Britain allowing fathers to stay overnight in hospital after the birth of their child. The scheme, Partners Staying Overnight, aims to allow dads to bond with their babies, take care of their partner and to ease the workload of the maternity staff.

According to the Independent, providing family rooms are already common practice in countries such as Canada and Sweden. Most hospitals in Ireland however, have no facilities for partners to stay overnight, and visits are restricted by the individual hospital’s visiting hours.

But then again, unlike the Irish, British men are entitled to paternity leave and can thus avail of family friendly schemes like this.

The lack of paternity leave in Ireland is a far cry from what Nathan Hegedus describes in Snack Bags and a Regular Paycheck: The Happy Life of a Swedish Dad.  The American lives in Sweden with his Swedish wife, describing how 80 per cent of Swedish dads take paternity leave, and that Swedes expect both fathers and mothers to take leave at the arrival of a new baby. Hegedus thinks the paid, statutory leave has made a change in the hegemonic masculinity. He claims to have noticed this change through small, everyday details of conversations:

No sports. No politics. No cars. And no questions about your job. Think about that. When in America—outside of maybe a sports bar during a really huge game—will any group of men gather and never ask the question, “So, what do you do?”

Another fascinating story that emerged recently was the one of the Swiss goal keeper Diego Benaglio. The 26-year-old is the first-choice keeper for the Swiss National soccer team. Just before the crucial Euro 2012 soccer qualifier against England, Benaglio made the controversial decision to take paternity leave to be with his wife who was about to give birth rather than be part of the squad, making many fans question the chances of qualifying for the Championship.

Photo from football.co.uk

The Never Ending Female Quota Debate

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Yesterday’s edition of RTÉ’s Prime Time made a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate on gender quotas in politics.

We heard all the usual arguments (this time from Irish Time columnist Sarah Carey): that (not) going into politics is a woman’s choice, that all women can go into politics if they really want, and that no woman entering politics due to a quota system will ever get any respect being elected on the basis of gender rather than skills (the latter argument seems only to apply to quotas based on gender however, as various quotas already in place, such as geographical quotas, are apparently unaffected by this Hellish Spell).

These are many of the same reasons reported by present Irish women TD’s, most of them opposing an introduction of such quotas.

We also heard that with the present rate of increase in female TD’s, it will be another 370 years until we have equal representation.

Ranking 84th in the world for female representation in politics, behind countries like Kazakhstan and Rwanda, only 4 EU countries are doing worse than Ireland (Cyprus, Romania, Hungary and Malta).

And with only 13 per cent women in the Dáil  (and two female TD’s, Olwyn Enright and Liz McManus, having recently stepped down), there is no denying that change is desperately needed.

Enright, previously opposing gender quotas, have recently changed her mind on the subject, arguing a valid point in the debate:

My gut instinct is no, but what’s the solution then if we don’t have quotas? I think that’s what nobody’s has really been able to answer. If you’re against quotas, how else do we increase female representation?

Of course, nobody wants a political climate where any quotas are necessary. However, all history and statistics prove that there is little choice in the matter if proportionate representation is to be achieved. According to Professor David Farrell, Head of School of Politics at UCD,  more than 100 countries already use gender quotas to facilitate more proportionate political representation.

There are opponents to such measures in every country, but like Enright says, what other solutions are we presented with? 370 years? In the last general election five constituencies had no female candidates at all!

Enough of the old arguments already.

It’s every woman’s choice whether she wants to be in politics or not? Of course it is. But like Ivana Bacik said in the debate yesterday, nobody can make choices in a vacuum. The way things are today, there are barriers to prevent women from going into/staying in politics. When women choose to go into politics, this choice will not be facilitated the same way for women as for men.

And the argument of getting elected due to your gender and not to your skills, when is it ever going to happen that unqualified women are going to be elected? It’s not like requiring more women on the lists will automatically lead to lists of male politicians but female bakers and accountants. There are plenty of qualified women out there! It just happens that finding them might take effort beyond going for a round of golf with friends from secondary school. Also, there are lots of countries to look to for experience. Quotas have generally led to more equal representation in politics in states where such have been introduced. And as far as I know, none of these have experienced a lapse in qualified members of parliament as a consequence.

Ireland is the Most Expensive Country for Childcare (If You’re Lucky Enough to Have Access to It)

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According to yesterdays Irish Daily Mail, a OECD report concludes that families in Ireland pay more for childcare than any other European country. A double-income family with two children spend 45 per cent of their net income on childcare and playschool bills. (The OECD average is 17 per cent.)

Single-income families spend less according to the report, and overall the average spending in Ireland makes for the 3rd most expensive country of the 32 countries surveyed.

Such high costs mean that many families are forced to choose other options for childcare. According to the latest Quarterly National Household Survey on childcare (2007), only 30 per cent of children aged 12 years and younger actually used non-parental childcare.

A majority of 70 per cent were being looked after by their parent(s). An explanation for this may be that 60 per cent said they did not have access to high quality, affordable childcare in their community.

In March 2010, the labour force participation rate was 60.7 per cent. The number of men participating in paid work was higher than the number of women; 68.8 vs. 52.7 per cent. In addition, women in paid jobs work an average of 8.6 hours less every week than men do.

Add in the fact that there is no legislation for paternity leave in this country, and you don’t have to be a genius to figure out who’s staying home with the kids.

There is no chance of achieving gender equality at work, work life balance or a reasonable degree of choice for men and women on how to work out such balance until these issues are prioritised. While the cost of childcare is by all means inexcusable, it’s only a small part of the state’s persistent ignorance of childcare and work-life balance.

Manager Awarded €100,000 for Gender Discrimination

Claims of work-related discrimination were down by 9 per cent in 2009, but the number of cases based on gender discrimination was up by 15 per cent, and claims for discrimination on family grounds were up by 25 per cent the same year, according to the Equality Tribunal.

Today, several such cases has been highlighted in the media.

The Irish Times writes that a hotel manager who was refused parental leave, denied access to a promotion while pregnant, and ultimately forced to take redundancy has been awarded €100,000 by the Equality Tribunal.

When the manager returned from maternity leave in 2007, her colleague had been given a managerial role and had become her superior. Her own role had been undermined, and she was told she should ‘be relieved’ as there would be less pressure on her now that she had a baby.

While hospitalised during her second pregnancy, she received a document giving her the opportunity to go on maternity leave, but only if she waived her rights to take legal actions. When she did not sign the document she was made redundant.

Another example brought by the Irish Times today is from last month. In a decision by the Tribunal, the HSE was ordered to award a nursing home employee €25,000 for discrimination based on gender. The complainant had applied for an extension of employment  after retirement, but the application was denied. The Equality Tribunal found that two of her male colleagues had been given such extension. The Tribunal further found that the HSE’s retirement policy was applied differently based on no other reason than the applicant’s gender.

Divorce Rates and Domestic Chores

Over the weekend, the Irish Times have dedicated a good bit of space to the recently launched report suggesting a strong correlation between sharing of unpaid work and divorce. Brian O’Connell’s article offers 3 married couples view on sharing of domestic chores, and after a somehow dry opening refers to some excellent quotes from the author of the report highlighting the reports relevance for feminist theory.

Ann Marie Hourihane’s article ‘Housework and radio companions in decline’ links the decline in time spent on house work to the decline in the number of radio listeners, and includes this brilliant observation:

‘Housework is one of the few subjects on which our politicians have nothing to say. This must be because the male politicians do not want to investigate yet another system from which they benefit so shamelessly(…)’