Ihave been championing progressive family leave policies to progress gender equity for several years now; indeed, it is the focus of my PhD research.
Yet I am often left wondering why organisations in the sector seem more comfortable championing women in leadership programmes than developing appropriate family leave policies.
There is an incongruence between calls for gender equity and family leave policy and practice.
The gender pay gap, the average pay difference between men and women, provides an overall snapshot of gender inequality within a specific setting – be it an organisation, sector or country. The gender pay gap in the UK HE sector is 13.7 per cent, as at 2022. Transition to parenthood, and beyond, is known to be inextricably linked to the gender pay gap. As the work of Claudia Goldin, 2023 Laureate in the Economic Sciences, has shown the bulk of earnings difference between men and women arises after the birth of the first child. The UK gender wage gap in relation to transition to parenthood is illustrated in the following chart.
