and ain't i a woman?: Maternity leave divides conservatives
Feminists have long called on the government to provide women with maternity leave on full pay, but what was interesting about the debate leading up to this year's federal budget was that the conservative forces appeared to have divided into two camps on the issue.
Against the advice of Prue Goward, the Howard government's sex discrimination commissioner, the budget again failed to provide maternity leave across the board. While public servants receive 6-12 weeks paid maternity leave, three quarters of women working in the private sector do not have access to maternity leave. Only 6.7% of current enterprise bargaining agreements and less than 1% of individual workplace agreements contain maternity leave provisions. Australia and the US are the only First World countries that do not offer comprehensive paid maternity leave.
Instead, the government opted to pay a "baby bonus" tax rebate to new mothers. For low-income earners, this amounts to $10 a week, or a measly $1.37 per day. Middle-income earners will receive up to $16 a week, with high-income earners receiving the largest rebate $48 per week.
The Australian Council of Social Services has criticised the unfair nature of the rebate. According to ACOSS, parents generally need the most financial help directly before and after their child is born, whereas the "baby bonus" is spread over five years.
Goward called the "baby bonus" a "good start", but said that the money should go toward maternity leave, and that if family payments were rearranged, this would have little affect on the budget bottom line. She believes that the government should take the bulk of the responsibility for the provision of maternity leave, otherwise it would be "unfair on business" and encourage further discrimination against women. She also argued that the government did not acknowledge that the modern family had changed, with most having two working parents.
In an article in the March 29 Melbourne Herald Sun, entitled "Why we must pay to populate", journalist Sarah Wilson wrote: "Maternity leave is a social benefit and should be treated in much the same way as jury leave or army leave ... [and] the act of raising children is a social responsibility. Replacing the population so that, among other things, the present generation can be cared for in old age, should not be left to the vagaries of private enterprise ... the public coffers should assist women to bring future taxpayers into the world."
Wilson claimed that the maternity leave debate often gets bogged down in issues of "choice" for individuals, but "procreation ... is a fundamental necessity, much like waste removal in big cities.
Wilson hopes that Goward's proposals steer the debate in the right direction and make it "relevant" again, rather than a "tired women's issue".
Neither side of the conservatives' debate over maternity leave is concerned with improving women's lives, but with how best to maintain "family values". The Coalition government's cuts to social welfare have tried to push women back into the home, 1950s style.
Goward and Wilson support paid maternity leave and see raising children as a social responsibility. However, Goward wants to make maternity leave "budget neutral" and shows no support for measures that would take financial pressure off the shoulders of working women. Wilson sees the issue of choice as "tired", ignoring the impact of decreasing choices in many areas of women's lives.
Conservatives who support paid maternity leave believe it provides benefits for business such as retention of skilled female workers, staff loyalty, reduced attrition rates and an earlier return of mothers to the workforce. The current proposals from Goward might eventually deliver paid maternity leave, but they are more designed to benefit business and support "family values" than providing real choices for women.
BY NATALIE ZIRNGAST
[The author is a member of the Democratic Socialist Party.]
From Green Left Weekly, June 5, 2002.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.