Men can access paid parental leave. So why aren't they taking it?

Media personality Jessie Stephens recently shared on national television a conversation about dads taking parental leave that is all too familiar.

“I remember years ago at a place I worked at, a man was taking two weeks parental leave and the boss said, ‘oh, do you need to take some time off to breastfeed?’”

Speaking to The Project, she recalled hearing the comment and immediately knowing it would have a “lasting impact” while also saying a lot about the workplace’s culture.

Does such stigma prevail in 2023 Australian workplaces? Not everywhere, but definitely in some places.

The latest data on men taking leave shows just how significant the issue is.

Overall, 2023 has been a game-changing year for paid parental leave in Australia, with the Albanese Government’s extended Commonwealth-funded scheme coming into effect in June, as well as another jump in the proportion of employers offering gender-neutral paid parental leave that is free from limiting ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ carer labels.

The latest data from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) released at the end of November and based on more than 5000 employers with 100 or more employees, highlights where paid parental leave access is improving, and where employers are seeing the value of supporting more diverse experiences of parenting and caring.

But the data also provides some hints about how stigma and entrenched workplace cultures might be holding men back from taking leave.

Of the employers that do offer paid parental leave, there was a 9% increase in 2022-23 in workplaces offering gender-neutral and label-free leave, or “universal paid parental leave” as WGEA refers to it. WGEA described this as a “hopeful” sign that employers are starting to understand the importance of removing carer labels.

But WGEA also found that male-dominated industries were still far less likely to offer universal leave than female-dominated industries, meaning many male workers are missing out in areas like manufacturing and transport, postal and warehousing.

Meanwhile, the proportion of employers offering some form of paid parental leave in addition to government-funded leave hardly budged in the reporting period, rising just one percentage point from 62 to 63% in 2022-23.

Yet, even where paid parental leave is being offered and made more accessible, men are still not taking much of it.

Overall, men accounted for just 14% of all paid primary carer parental leave taken, just a tiny increase of 0.6%. This is despite a growing number of men having the option to take leave funded by their employers. As WGEA Director Mary Wooldridge said on this gap in men being offered but not taking paid parental leave, having good and well-intentioned policies is just the start. “The real hard work comes in changing the culture and the environment, addressing any stigma or underlying stereotypes that inhibit those policies being taken up and put into place.”

Unfortunately, the trend of men taking government-funded paid parental leave also isn’t encouraging. New government figures recently released show the scheme was accessed by 170,200 women in 2022, compared with just 1,020 men. The data shows that 87,895 men accessed the two-week “dad and partner pay”, which has since been removed from the reformed scheme, compared to 745 women.

Also limiting men and an overall shift in access to PPL are continued vast divides in who has access to PPL, with the WGEA data showing employees can not only be limited by their gender and carer status but also limited by the size of the business they happen to work for.

Almost nine in ten (87%) of businesses in the 5000 plus employee range are offering paid primary carers or universally available parental leave, compared with just 57% in the 100 to 246 employee range, and a total figure across all sized employees of 63%.

Although we don’t have WGEA data on businesses with less than 100 team members, we know that startups and small businesses can struggle to offer paid parental leave, given concerns about resourcing such policies.

There are also concerns that employers are seeing the government scheme as “enough” for new parents, which goes against expectations from the prime minister earlier this year that employers should step up to complement the system. Forty-five percent of those employers that don’t offer PPL say it’s because the “government scheme is sufficient”.

The uptake of paid parental leave for men is a critical component for shifting entrenched social expectations and creating a stronger environment of shared care. Men need to see role models taking parental leave and role models again highlighting what it means to “share the care”: working flexibly, part-time, being open and proud about taking time out for kids.

So, when men can access the leave, what’s stopping them from doing so?

First up, there’s the gender pay gap and the fact men are so often in higher-paid positions. The WGEA data uncovered a 21.7% total remuneration gender pay gap. Men are also still far more likely to be in senior leadership roles, accounting for 78% of CEOs and 59% of senior management positions.

But there is also the workplace stigma, social norms, and entrenched gender stereotypes standing in the way of men taking paid parental leave and even going on to work in part-time and flexible positions.

There is still a lack of breastfeeding facilities and options to support women who are nursing as they return to work. There are still barriers around flexibility for mothers when returning to work to support their unique health and care needs.

There is the fact that men in smaller businesses are less likely to have access to any kind of employer-paid parental leave — an issue that also impacts women, but could put the onus on women to take more unpaid leave regardless of what sized business they work in.

And there is the entrenched history and expectations we continue to carry regarding who does the care work, despite such expectations coming in sharp contrast to the dramatic increase in women’s workforce participation.

Employers can help change this starting with benchmarking their parental leave policies and practices against The National Work + Family Standards. There is also a business case guide for employers on Advancing Shared Care in Australia through Paid Parental Leave which highlights how employers can contribute to changing how we approach parental leave in Australia.

This article was first published by Women’s Agenda.