[Endama]

This may be an unpopular thought here but it seems to me that these momazonians may seriously consider unionizing. If executives at major tech companies are not willing to meet the needs of their female workforce (both current and future) then it seems that collective bargaining would be an effective means of making their position more convincing.

The risk is that companies may increasingly try and avoid hiring more women in the future; but it could also be that employers, who want to seem more socially responsible, may take the financial hit and invest in the up-front-costs in order to get access to a larger labor pool.

[rebuilder]

The underlying assumption here is that women take care of kids, while men work. That's what an union should address IMO. Instead of maternal leave, have parental leave that men, too, can take. That way, the playing field is leveled more.

Of course, there's no quick fix here - it's a deepset cultural issue, and getting men to take that leave when it's available to them still seems to take some pushing.

[fastball]

That's because it's not merely a cultural issue, it's a biological one.

By necessity, all women that have children need to take time off, at least in the pregnancy/birth stage. The productivity lost is generally less if you only need to coordinate one person taking maternal/paternal leave. So the obvious choice is to extend the leave of the person that absolutely must take it.

[reverend_gonzo]

Women should get more leave, because they need to physically recover Having a baby damages your body and often requires minor (sometimes major surgery) to repair.

I (as a man) just had a child a few days ago. I'm perpetually sleep deprived and miserable, but my wife? On top of being in an immense amount of pain due to (minor) complications, she is not able to take any real painkillers, and has to spend an hour breastfeeding every three hours.

there is nothing about her situation that I envy, or that any man compares to post-childbirth.

[lotsofpulp]

In order to make it work, I think you would have to force men to take the parental leave, otherwise the implicit value of a man would still be higher. If the goal is to mitigate the consequences of giving birth and taking care of an infant, and the consequence is that women have less time for work, then you have to force men to also have less time for work.

[oarabbus_]

Hmm, even with paternal leave, the mother would be taking more time off while the husband works in the overwhelming majority of families, at least those who are not fortunate to have millions in the bank where both spouses are able to take time off without any thought to financial impact.

Painting this as a "deepset cultural issue" and not a matter of practicality and biology is either missing the point, or intellectually dishonest.

[satyrnein]

This seems to be more specifically about backup childcare, for when a kid is sick and can't go to school that day. I suspect that if no backup childcare is available, the mother takes a day off to stay home with the child much more often than the father does. (I'd love to see some data, though.)

So you can fight it two ways, change the culture so that the career harm falls more equitably on men and women both, or create solutions such as backup childcare benefits so the harm does not fall on either.

Not that it's fair, but women stopped washing clothes by hand not because men started, but because laundry machines were invented.

[api_or_ipa]

In Canada maternity and paternity leave are pooled together. The parents can then decide how to apportion their leave-times to best suit their needs.

It seems to be a pretty obvious way to handle this situation.

[psadri]

Even with parental leave, the need for day care doesn’t stop. Some of the companies I have been part of offer very generous (by US standards) parental leave - 6 months. But the need for day care is there at least until the kids are 2-3 years old.

[sampo]

> getting men to take that leave when it's available to them still seems to take some pushing.

Are Americans so devoted to they work, that they would not take parental leave even at 100% pay?

[andbaird]

Amazon does give spousal leave.

[chaosbutters]

what about people that'd don't want children? Where is our (full/part) paid time off? This is the same problem restaurants have with smoke breaks. You have to give equal breaks to non-smokers.

It seems the simplest solution would just be to offer X% paid time off per Y yrs of service regardless of children/no children with the rule the employee gives the company Z months notice. That way male/female parents can figure out who stays home with kid and childless workers get the same benefit. It is basically like a sabbatical university professors get to go refine their skills. Employees get a certain amount of time/pay to go do 'life' things based on service.

[ykevinator]

We should not surrender gender in the pursuit of tolerance.

[zeveb]

Hey, what about the childless? Do folks without kids get to take long-term leave too?

[ethan_robot]

This is a popular opinion, and in addition it is correct and good. If you're looking for a union the https://www.iww.org are a great place to start!

[Pharmakon]

A union with fewer that 6k members worldwide and an extreme ideology seems like an insane place to start actually, unless your goal is to turn people off unions.

[49531]

Unions are also like macros for action. All the work that goes into organized action is streamlined when you do it permanently as a union. It makes little sense to stick your neck out, and then wait until something goes wrong again and having to do all of the legwork all over.

[camelNotation]

Major banks do a good job with this. They recognize that this is not just a matter of gender equality, but LGBT equality as well. They give equal parental leave to both sexes for both birth and adoption (for family bonding), which allows flexibility on how time off is handled in traditional male/female childbirths, but also in male/male and female/female adoptions/births as well. If companies like Amazon don't catch up soon, they're going to end up on the wrong end of some very serious PR attacks in the coming years.

[drawnwren]

As someone who was adopted, this seems excessive. Unless someone is adopting a newborn, adoption carries a significantly different set of requirements than childbirth.

Also, calling adoption birth for same sex couples is weird. My mother is my mother but in no world did she give birth to me.

[cma]

The government needs to mandate or fund it with taxes it so all companies are under the same burden.