Setting up an egalitarian parenting leave for mothers and fathers, that is to say compulsory and of the same duration for each parent, would allow the arrival of children to no longer dig inequalities in the professional paths of mothers and fathers.
The problem
The impact of maternity on gender inequalities remains major. After the birth of their first child, mothers earn an average of 38 % less in the next ten years, while the fathers’ career is not disrupted. This penalty is due to mechanisms that take shape in professional and family universes and play in synergy.
Thus, birth accentuates the imbalance of roles between spouseshe, mothers ensuring and assuming most of the domestic and family tasks. In doing so, unlike fathers, they adjust their professional activity to the constraints of family life: recourse to part-time, (re) orientation towards jobs more favorable to the articulation with the private sphere, professional renunciations, withdrawal of the labor market … In addition, they can be the subject of discriminatory behavior on the part of employers underlined by stereotypes and gender standards always in force on the role of mothers and Fathers. So pregnancy and maternity are perceived as risks within the company that still weigh on women. The differences between maternity and paternity holidays help maintain the vicious circle of professional inequalities.
The proposal
Substitute for the current maternity and uneven maternity leave an egalitarian parenting leave, that is to say of the same duration for each of the two parents and with the same compulsory character. This is to compel the fathers to endorse, in the same way as mothers, their parental role and its implications from birth in order to help to stimulate a virtuous circle.
How does it work
Currently, women benefit from 16 -week maternity leave, 8 of which are compulsory (including 6 are postnatal) under penalty of sanctions for the employer, whether or not respect this period of absolute prohibition to work. Men have been entitled to 28 days of vacation, which have only been compulsory at birth since 2021, have been entitled to 28 days.
Mothers and fathers receive social security by social security by social security up to 100% of their average salary of the last three months, capped at € 101.94 per day at 1e January 2025. According to business agreements and collective agreements, employers can supplement it to ensure compensation at 100 %.
Because the difference in leave time at the birth of the child creates an inequality between women and men who perpetuate, an egalitarian parenting would allow a rebalancing of parental responsibilities. He would go through a greater involvement of fathers in children’s care from birth and a lesser assignment of women with household and parental tasks. In order for the fathers to take care of the child alone and fully learn their role, part of their holidays should be desynchronized with that of mothers.
This equal treatment between each parent would help reduce gender stereotypes so that suspicions linked to parenting weighing on women would now also weigh on men. This would thus eliminate one of the causes of discrimination against women. Ultimatelyegalitarian parenting would benefit children, families and society as a whole.
On what research work is the proposal founded ?
We no longer count the work that highlighted the penalizing effect of maternity on the professional trajectories of women. Those of Claudia Goldin (1990), Nobel Prize in economics in 2023 for his research on understanding the evolution of the place of women on the labor market, show the salary dropout after the birth of the first child. A set of work explores the factors of professional inequality between women and men and point to the essential role of the arrival of children (Di Paola and Al2022) and this, from the start of working life (Di Paola and Epiphane, 2023), when others measure the wage penalty of mothers (Auriol and al.2024).
On another register, research highlights on the one hand the difficult articulation between professional life and personal life for mothers (Esteban, 2024) and on the other hand, the persistence of gender social roles.
Finally, a section of research focuses on the effects of maternity and/or paternity leave in countries where configurations differ. Comparisons of European countries highlight that the paternity holidays contribute to a more equitable distribution of parental tasks (Kleven and al.2019). In France, Legendre and Al. (2016) establish that fathers having used paternity leave are more involved in family tasks than others. Finally, based on an assessment of the role of children on professional inequalities, Périvier (2017) offers different scenarios of paternity leave, including that of a compulsory duration aligned with that of compulsory maternity leave of 6 weeks, and as possible the costs.
How to implement the proposal ?
Precursor countries, Sweden is the first country to have replaced maternity and paternity leave for the benefit of a 480 -day parental leave, 90 of which are reserved for each parent in a non -transferable and lost way if they are not used (the rest of the days can be freely distributed among the two parents). To date, only Spain has aligned paternity leave with maternity leave, both in its overall duration (16 weeks) and its compulsory part (6 weeks) under penalty of sanction against the employer.
The implementation of this proposal for maternity and egalitarian maternity leave requires modifying the labor code, social security and the general code of the public service.
This proposal echoes the bill n ° 2317, filed on March 12, 2024, to date referred to the Social Affairs Committee of the National Assembly for examination. It goes against one of the recommendations of the Court of Auditors (December 2024) which, to free up reception places for early childhood, is to extend maternity leave by one month and not that of one or the other of the parents.
If the cost of the proposal can be perceived as a brake, it is to be balanced with the overall cost of inequalities between women and men for society.