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Thursday, August 06, 2015

Netflix blazes a trail of equality with unlimited maternity and paternity leave

Babies are awesome. Besides carrying your DNA imprint for another generation, they’ll usually stick around long enough to ease you gently into that good night. But they can also be disruptive as hell, especially if you’re a woman working in the US tech industry — an industry that heavily skews male in a country with the worst family leave protections in the entire developed world.

Although it sounds like a paradox, giving men more time off actually benefits women in the workplace. See, paid maternity leave is often measured in weeks or months, while paid paternity can be as little as a few days — or nothing. Companies that offer family leave allowances to both parents equally set the expectation that fathers will take off just as much time as their child-bearing peers. A 2014 study already showed that if paternity time is paid, men will take it.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In 2015, we want equality for everyone. So why is it never discussed that Paternity leave is always less at places of work than Maternity leave? I understand that women need to recover from carrying the baby and the actual birth, but it starts the relationship of child/parent off showing bias that women are more important in the relationship. This is my opinion, but I have just wondered why this is. No one ever seems to discuss this topic.

Anonymous said...

any bets on how soon Netflix is bankrupt?