Job security crucial not money

A national paid maternity leave scheme will make little difference to women's willingness to return to work after having a baby, according to a new study that undermines a main argument of paid maternity leave proponents.

The study shows women who use unpaid maternity leave are almost as likely to return to work by the time their child is 12 to 18 months' old as women who use paid leave, or a combination of paid and unpaid leave.

"It is having leave that makes a difference, not having paid leave," said the author of the study, Jennifer Baxter, a research fellow at the Australian Institute of Family Studies. "It is having job protection that enables women to return to work that is important."

However, access to paid leave influences how quickly women return to their jobs when their babies are less than a year old, the study found. For example, self-employed women, who have no paid leave, return to work fastest with a high proportion back at their desks by the time their baby is three months old.

The controversial findings are based on a large sample of 3573 women and track their workforce participation after giving birth. The study found most Australian mothers were back at work by the time their baby was 18 months old. Of women who combined paid and unpaid maternity leave 80 per cent were back in work. But a high 77 per cent of women who took only unpaid leave were also back in work.

Dr Baxter says it is possible paid leave would make a small improvement but it "is unlikely that a dramatic increase in maternal employment following the birth would result … ".

She said universal paid maternity leave, which the Federal Government has under consideration, had other important objectives such as improving the financial wellbeing of families and maternal health.

Proponents of paid maternity leave argue a universal scheme will improve retention of women workers by strengthening their attachment to their employer, and will provide a critical boost to mothers' workforce participation rates. Australian women have a right to 12 months' unpaid leave if they have worked for an employer for a year. Continued...