BPW Australia

Of the 160+ countries that have signed CEDAW, only 6 countries including Australia don't have paid maternity leave. Of these 6, developed nations comprise half - the USA, New Zealand and Australia. A number of US states are introducing legislation to enable access to unemployment benefits for 12 weeks and NZ has just announced a proposal for paid maternity leave. Australia is about to become the only developed nation that does not have either state or national provision for paid maternity leave.
Laila Harre, New Zealand's Minister of Women's Affairs, wrote in the Australia on 5 September this year that the NZ Government is set to introduce paid maternity leave from work at the time of a baby's birth, funded from general taxation and available to mothers who have been working for the same employer for at least 10 hours a week for the previous year. Details are still being developed.
Public support for the introduction of paid parental leave is strong in NZ and no less strong in Australia. Although the NZ government's preference was for a fair and non-discriminatory payroll levy across all employers which would have cost employers little more than $1 a week for average-wage hours, what NZ women will end up with is a taxpayer-funded scheme which essentially subsidises the employer contribution to paid parental leave, leaving employers with the option to supplement this.

In June 2001, the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers, Australia ran an article on paid maternity leave around the world in its professional journal comparing paid maternity leave standards in different countries. In the article Andrea Mahony, Executive Officer of APESMA, states that most developed countries provide for 2 to 6 months maternity leave, paid at 80-100% of the women's previous earnings. Maternity leave is funded generally through a contributory social security or social insurance scheme, paid by employees and employers with government contributions. In developing countries leave is most commonly 2 to 4 months paid at 60-100% of previous earnings.
The following chart compares provisions across a number of developed nations.

Country	Length of leave	Cash benefits	Who pays
Austria	16 weeks	100%	Social Security
Belgium	15 weeks	82% for 30 days, then 75%	Social Security
France	16-26 weeks	100%	Social Security
Germany	14 weeks	100%	Social Security
Italy	5 months	80%	Social Security
Switzerland	8 weeks	100%	Employer
UK	14-18 weeks	(0% for 6 weeks then flat rate)	Social Security
Japan	14 weeks	60%	Social Security or health insurance
Russia	140 days	100%	Social Security
Singapore	8 weeks	100%	Employer
Israel	12 weeks	75%	Social Security
Ireland	14 weeks	70% or fixed rate	Social Security
Sweden	15 months (either parent)	75% for 12 months, then flat rate	Social Security
Canada	17-18 weeks	55% for 15 weeks

In Australia

The Government's response to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission's Report in 2000, Pregnant and Productive - It's a Right not a Privilege to Work While Pregnant, was to adopt many of the recommendations to make workplaces less obstructive to pregnant women. However it did not support recommendations 44 and 46 that dealt specifically with paid maternity leave.

Recommendation 44:

That the federal Government remove its current reservation to article 11(2)(b) of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women on paid maternity leave.

Recommendation 46:

That the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business provide funding to the Sex Discrimination Commissioner to undertake economic modelling and analysis of possible paid maternity leave options. The project, to be conducted in consultation with the Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business, would also involve extensive and close consultations with all relevant interested parties.

The Government's reasons included that Australian women already have up to 52 weeks of parental leave after 12 months continuous service, a means-tested maternity allowance and a Families and Communities Strategy that commits to researching obstacles to work and family arrangements. BPW Australia believes that this is nowhere near enough and agrees with the observation made at the time by the then Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Susan Halliday, that :-
This recommendation was aimed at providing the data needed for an informed debate within Australia. It is impossible to have informed debate if we refuse to collect the data. Legislative frameworks need to reflect our labour market realities. Human rights law must not be allowed to stagnate. The time has come to update the legal protection women are entitled to.

Nevertheless, provision of employer-funded paid maternity leave by Australian employers has been increasing. ABS data for 2002 indicates that 30% of female employees were entitled to paid maternity leave. The Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency fact sheet reports that 41% of surveyed private sector employers with >100 staff (not all employers) provide paid maternity leave of usually 6 weeks, up from 23% in 2001. Paid maternity leave is most frequently provided in industries with high numbers of skilled female employees and/or government involvement such as the education, finance and insurance, communications and health and community services sectors, but rates are low (<20%) in industries such as retailing, construction and hospitality which have a high concentration of lower-skilled and casual female employees. Managers, administrators and professionals are more likely to have access to paid maternity leave (>50%) and sales and service workers are less likely (<20%). Organisations that offer paid maternity leave report a higher staff retention rate.

The Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey in 2001 fails to mention paid maternity leave. Given that an analysis of employer-employee workplace agreements during 1998 and 1999 indicated that only 10% of agreements included provisions for paid maternity leave (and 90% didn’t), it would appear that the rate remains too low to bother reporting. It is unlikely that a woman of child-bearing age would be able to negotiate paid maternity leave on an individual basis if workplace agreements were abolished. ACTU data suggests where private sector agreements mention paid maternity leave, they generally provide 6 to 12 weeks PML, sometimes requiring 12 months service. Commonwealth employees and some State public servants receive 12 weeks paid maternity leave.

The baby bonus

The recently introduced $3000 top-up is not paid maternity leave by any stretch of the imagination. It won’t make the difference between being able to take sufficient time off work to settle mother and baby into a routine and rushing back to work to keep the mortgage payments up and the roof over the child’s head. The recent increase in the birthrate was predicted – it reflects the baby boomers’ grandchildren. It is welcome, but cannot be attributed only to the baby bonus. This current blip is a secondary statistical echo from the baby boomer echo, smaller than the previous echo (their children) but still expected. It can also be attributed to some extent to the increase in available information about the decline in women's fertility after 30 that is influencing more women to procreate earlier or risk missing out altogether.

Moving forward

Relying on the market to deliver paid maternity is not the best option. As Laila Harre observed in The Australian, markets are not designed to deliver non-discriminatory outcomes. She goes on to say:
Paid parental leave reflects the fact that neither having children nor working is a lifestyle choice. Both are something society needs women to do, and in return we need to ensure that money doesn't dictate whether or not a woman takes a healthy amount of time off work following the birth of a child.

Women are entering tertiary education and the workforce at similar and some greater rates than men. Their record in small and micro business has been impressive, although recently losing some ground.

Since on average, 20 to 59 year old men are in full-time paid work for more than 18 years compared to 11 years for women, and in 2000 women's pay remained around 80% of men's. To a great extent this reflects women having babies. If we want Australia's women to have babies, if Australian men want to be fathers, if families are truly the centre of our culture as we say, then we need to adopt national policies and legislation that make it easier to form families.

BPW Australia believes that paid maternity leave should be available to Australian women whatever their work circumstances. Larger government departments and corporations have admitted that they offer such leave because it makes good business sense – they attract and retain good staff and reduce the impost of training and then losing new people. BPW Australia believes that benefit needs to be extended to all business, including small business. Women in small and micro business choose not between just family and career but between family and closing down a viable business and putting staff out of work.

Whatever scheme we adopt as a nation to make this a reality, it must allow all working women, even those running their own businesses, to take paid maternity leave. It must allow genuine choice for all women, and men, to invest in Australia’s future by creating the families that we value so highly.

Jean Murray, VPEP BPW Australia 2002.


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