Work and parenthood
... to employment for the mother or the father who takes time off for child-rearing purposes. As of December 31, 2000, the Government of Canada extended the total length of leave for new parents to as many as 52 weeks. This doubles the amount of time a new parent can stay on benefits. How Does It Work? Parents need to log 600 hours of insurable earnings to qualify for the maximum of 50 weeks of maternity and/or parental benefits. This would be equivalent to approximately 30 hours of employment over a period of 20 weeks. The Canada Labour Code provides up to 17 weeks of maternity leave, a two-week waiting period and 15 weeks of paid benefits for new mothers. New mothers may extend their leave by taking an additional 35 weeks of parental leave after the maternity benefits expire. Parents may also share the parental benefits with the mother taking the maternity leave and the father taking the extended 35 weeks of parental leave. Many companies in Canada offer family friendly benefits to help balance work and life responsibilities. Here’s a list of the most typically offered work/life benefits at companies nationwide: - Flexible policies – These include part-time jobs, job sharing or flexible working hours. The right to part-time work upon request coupled with the right to return to full-time work at a later time might benefit workers who wish to remain professionally active during pregnancy and nursing, yet require shorter working hours to avoid excessive fatigue. Many working women still carry the double burden of a full-time workday combined with major time commitments at home. The World Health Organization notes that, when making accommodation for pregnancy and recent birth, the totality of a woman's workload must be taken into account, including household work and child care. - Seminars or publications – Lectures, workshops or handbooks are offered on parenting, eldercare, communication, stress management, dealing with guilt, and more. - Employee Assistance Programs – These are short-term counselling and referral services offered by companies to help employees with personal problems. - On-site childcare - Sick-child care – The company may be affiliated with services that send a childcare provider to an employee’s home if his or her child is sick. A guarantee for pregnant women and young mothers that they will not lose their job as a result of being pregnant, absent on maternity leave or because they have just had a child, is an essential element in maternity protection. The vulnerability of women workers to dismissal during maternity leave is an ongoing concern. The unlawful dismissal of women during maternity leave or during the period of nursing has become a common fact. The general trend is towards a broader protection covering not only a worker's absence on maternity leave but starting from the beginning of her pregnancy and including the period following her return to work when she must fulfil family responsibilities. The Canada Labour Code is written so that it protects the job for the period of time on parental leave as well as on the extended parental leave. Each province and territory is responsible for adapting its own labour code as required. Employees who take a paternity leave must be reinstated into their former position at their place of employment. A company may also opt to give them another position as long as it is a comparable job at the same location with the same wages and benefits. Provisions must be made to ensure that the parent on leave can return to their job with the same benefits as they had prior to their parental leave. 2- CHALLENGES • Discrimination issues While women's employment rates have risen in many regions of the world, the quality of their employment remains far below that of men. Although there has been significant progress in removing systemic discrimination in the labour force, women continue to be at a disadvantage relative to men in the workplace - in remuneration, appointment and promotion - because of their responsibilities as the primary bearers and carers of children. They are likely to face unequal hiring standards, unequal opportunities for training and retraining, unequal pay for work of equal value, and unequal promotion prospects. Discriminatory hiring based on potential or actual maternity may involve practices which enter deeply into the private lives of the workers involved. In some countries, employers still require a negative pregnancy test, a gynaecological examination, or a medical certificate attesting to sterilization as a condition of employment or requiring a commitment from the employee that she will not become pregnant during her contract. Difficult is the task of ensuring, that maternity does not become an obstacle to recruitment. Since motherhood and the family responsibilities associated with it still strongly influence the image of women at work, it may be used by employers as a criterion when selecting candidates for a particular post. The question is how to ensure that employers do not reject candidates of child-bearing age, who still bear the heaviest burden of family responsibilities and whose absence on maternity leave or for even longer periods of parental leave creates organizational problems for employers and in some cases also the financial burden of paying salaries during such leave of absence. • Returning to work Women who return to work after childbirth face the task of reconciling their professional lives with their new family roles. Most will cope with the strains of a double day: fulfilling performance requirements on the job while striving to meet the needs of their child for nurturing. Some will discover, however, that their return to work is marked by resentment from colleagues or less favoura...