Who gets paid maternity leave?
Appreciating the variety of instruments listed above for providing maternity leave, it can be seen that focus on any one bargaining level, may miss the others. At the higher end of estimates Dr Barbara Pocock estimates that 39 per cent of female employees have access to paid maternity leave of some form (about 7 weeks on average): • 39 per cent of female employees in Australia can take an average of seven weeks paid maternity leave, up from 28 per cent in 1997. • Although 77 per cent of women in the finance and insurance industries have access to paid maternity leave, only one per cent are covered in the retail sector, and 2 percent in hotels and restaurants. • Among developed countries, only the US and Australia have not legislated for minimum paid maternity leave across the workforce. Sweden provides 15 months of parental leave at 75 per cent of salary. (‘Work and family: the crunch: A better life can be legislated’). Another source of data on entitlements is the the Joint Department
