Leave high on the policy agenda

Entitlements for workers to take leave from work for health or welfare reasons have been part of the policy scene for a long time. Maternity Leave for women, to protect their health before and after childbirth and that of their newborn children, was first introduced towards the end of the nineteenth century, and was present in 21 countries by 1914; in 1919, the International Labour Office (ILO) adopted a Maternity Protection Convention, which included minimum leave standards. Maternity Leave continued to spread, to be followed by a second wave of leave policy, starting in Sweden in 1974, which introduced Parental Leave, leave available equally to mothers and fathers to enable both to spend time away from the workplace caring for their young child. This wave of leave has also included some countries adopting Paternity Leave, a provision only for fathers to allow them to spend time in the period immediately after childbirth with their partner, new child and older children; other entitlements, also increasingly to be found, include leave to care for sick children and adult relatives. It could be said that we are on the cusp of a third wave of leave, looking beyond a gendered primary carer model to allow for more diverse family types, including same-sex families.

Today, Parental Leave and other forms of statutory leave are widespread and still spreading; high on the policy agenda, they have become a staple of the modern welfare state, concerned as it is with actively supporting parental employment, child well-being, and (on paper at least) promoting gender equality. According to the ILO, in its 2013 survey of legal provision in 185 countries, all provided some form of statutory leave for pregnant women, and all but two (Papua New Guinea and the United States) included some payment. However, only