Shared parental leave and paternity leave
Harini Iyengar is an alumna of the Law Faculty having sudied the BA Jurisprudence and the BCL ar Brasenose. This paper was delivered at the 11KBW Employment Law Conference on 14th May and 3rd June 2015.
Posted:
Time to read:
Shared parental leave came into operation in the United Kingdom on 5 April 2015. In this paper I will invite you to compare and contrast the rights which working fathers and working mothers have to take time off work to care for their children. This exercise takes you to the heart of the choice which governments, societies, families, and individuals can make between the feminism of equality and the feminism of difference. To what extent, in the 21st century, should parents be given equal rights to care for their children, particularly now that shared parental leave gives a man a right to take a year off work to care for his newborn baby from birth? To what extent does the new regime ignore the physical realities of women’s experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding? Against this abstract conflict between two philosophical interpretations of feminism, how are employers and employees to manage these issues in the workplace in practice?
You can listen to the podcast or read the paper in full.
Share: