EXCERPTS
The president’s Commission on the Status of Women was unequivocal in its recommendation: “Paid maternity leave or comparable insurance benefits should be provided for women workers.” That conclusion was reached in 1963, when John Kennedy was president, but America still has no federal policy in place to guarantee working mothers or fathers paid time off to care for their new babies. It is one of only two countries in the world, along with Papua New Guinea, that have no statutory national policy of paid maternity leave. The average member of the oecd, a club of mostly rich countries, offers new mothers 18 weeks of paid leave.
For decades paid leave was “dismissed as anti-business and marginalised as a woman’s issue,” says Ellen Bravo, who runs Family Values at Work, an ngo. That is changing. The 2016 race was the first time both presidential candidates publicly lent support to paid parental leave and the issue is likely to feature in 2020. The president’s most recent budget included a proposal for six weeks of paid parental leave, but provided no details on funding. Several bills have been introduced in Congress, including one co-sponsored by Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democratic senator who is running for president, which would provide paid leave for new parents and caregivers for sick family members, and another co-sponsored by Marco Rubio, a Republican senator, which focuses exclusively on new parents. Neither bill has passed, but a national policy will pass both the House and Senate in the next three to five years, Ms Bravo predicts.
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