Employers’ leave policies often reinforce gender role stereotypes by providing more leave for mothers, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) says. And it’s becoming increasingly likely that employees will begin to push back against these policies, according to SHRM.
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On average, women receive 41 days of paid maternity leave; men, on average, receive 22 days, the employer group determined following its Paid Leave in the Workplace Survey.
“The imbalance in parental leave indicates that organizations still expect mothers to take on the majority of care for a new child,” said Evren Esen, SHRM’s director of workforce analytics, in a press release. “This inequity in paid-time-off days may discourage fathers from taking a similar amount of time off to care for a new child.”
Such policies aren’t necessarily discriminatory, but careful implementation is key. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says that employers should distinguish between leave related to physical limitations imposed by pregnancy and childbirth on the one hand, and leave for care and bonding on the other.
“Leave related to pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions can be limited to women affected by those conditions. However, parental leave must be provided to similarly situated men and women on the same terms,” the commission says in its Enforcement Guidance on Pregnancy Discrimination and Related Issues.
“If, for example, an employer extends leave to new mothers beyond the period of recuperation from childbirth (e.g. to provide the mothers time to bond with and/or care for the baby), it cannot lawfully fail to provide an equivalent amount of leave to new fathers for the same purpose,” the guidance says.
In its findings, SHRM warned that differences in paid parental leave benefits based on gender could be increasingly questioned by employees, in terms of both gender equality and of equality between same-sex and opposite-sex couples with children.
Other Findings
SHRM said its survey also revealed several other key findings:
- The majority of employers based paid-time-off (PTO) and paid vacation days on employees’ length of service. For PTO plans, employers gave, on average, 13 to 26 days; they offered eight to 22 days for paid vacation.
- Few employers, however, based paid sick days and paid personal days on an employee’s length of service. When those days were not based on tenure, full-time employees received an average of 11 sick days. Part-time employees received 7 days. Employers awarded both full- and part-time employees about 4 personal days each year.
- Employers provided, on average, 31 days of paid adoption leave and 36 days of paid surrogacy leave.
- Few employees left any type of parental leave unused.
- Nearly nine out of 10 employers offered bereavement leave.
- Few employers offered paid or unpaid sabbatical programs.
- Thirty-seven percent of employers provided paid leave to vote that was beyond what’s required by law.
The findings were based on survey responses from 2,665 random SHRM members.