Week 13 - Womens Electoral Lobby

Women Leave Work after having a baby

ONE in five women are leaving the workforce after having a child because of inadequate or non-existent paid maternity leave, women's employment experts say.
The 2007 Australian Social Trends study shows that of the 270,000 women who had children while in the workforce in 2005, 72,000 did not use leave to care for their new-born babies and 55,000 did not return to their jobs.
The director of the Centre for Work and Life at the University of South Australia, Barbara Pocock, said figures indicated that the workforce was losing women.
"A significant number of women have a weak attachment to the labour force precisely because they have poor maternity leave provisions," Professor Pocock said. "This is begging, just begging, for policy attention."
The survey also showed that 57 per cent of women did not use paid maternity leave because it was "not available or offered by the employer".
The overwhelming number of women who used paid leave worked in the public sector - some 76 per cent - while just 27 per cent of women in the private sector used similar leave.
Professor Pocock, author of The Labour Market Ate My Babies, said figures suggesting a rise in the number of women entitled to paid maternity leave - up from 36 per cent in 2003 to 41 per cent in 2005 - were deceptive because many of women with access to such leave did not use it because they were beyond child-bearing age. "For them, it's meaningless," Professor Pocock said.

My opinion.

When I had my first child I held down a very good position in the HR Dept at Southcorp Wines, Magill. I took 12 months off and then tried to return to my old position, I had received no pay during Maternity Leave. The position was a very busy one and I had always worked from 8ish til 5.00-5.30 there was no way I wanted to go back to those hours with a baby. I applied to work part time within the company and was knocked back as they did not want part time workers as they said it got to messy and was to hard to organise.

So my opinion on paid maternity leave is this, I think its a great idea and families do deserve it, but unfotunately a lot of companies can not afford to pay for it. Its alright for government bodies and large corporations but for a small business owner this could make or break them. Not sure what the answer is here, I can understand though why women don't return to work. Child care although more reasonable now, is still a big expense, you add transport costs to that and a reduction in your family payment because your earning more, it hardly seems worth all the stress.