APL : a giant leap for womankind

Fathers of babies born in the UK yesterday are the first to benefit from the right to Additional Paternity Leave and Pay under the Additional Paternity Leave Regulations 2010, but the real beneficiaries of this change will be working women.

My jaw dropped one day when I worked as a recruitment consultant.  I was myself pregnant at the time and when taking a job spec from a client, he told me that he would not consider any women between 25 and 35 for the role (a professional role in an engineering company) as he didn't want them going off on maternity leave.   It has long been established in common law that discrimination on the grounds of pregnancy is a form of sex discrimination, and this was written into statute in a 2005 amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act 1975.  Despite this, a survey conducted by the EOC in the same year found that 45% of women experienced some form of tangible discrimination at work during their pregnancy, and for 7% this resulted in an involuntary or constructive dismissal (Equal Opportunities Commission).  This study looked at women who were already in employment, but it is clear that if prejudice is ingrained to this extent, it inevitably spills over into the recruitment and selection process, as evidenced by my blatantly discriminatory client.  Despite it being illegal (not to mention immoral and illogical), many employers still try to avoid hiring women who are pregnant or of childbearing age, for fear of the perceived additional burden of recruiting and managing temporary cover while they take leave. 

Now that fathers can also take up to 6 months' leave, it makes even less sense to discriminate against young women in the recruitment pool: men are now just as able to take an extended period of leave as their partners on the birth of a child.  Of course, the people who hold the prejudices will likely believe that men will seldom take this leave, as they may perceive men as the breadwinners and women the child-rearers, but in fact this very piece of legislation could help to redress this imbalance.  Previously there was no choice in the matter so the genders were forced into these traditional roles, but increasingly we live in a society of dual career families, and the gender pay gap, although still unacceptable,  continues to narrow every year (Office for National Statistics): so for many couples it will make practical and financial sense for the mother to return to work sooner and the father to take leave.  Once this legislation has had time to bed in and it becomes commonplace for fathers to take APL, the playing field for men and women applying for the same jobs will become a little more level.