Spain to finally bring parity to maternity and paternity leave

Spanish fathers in Spain are now to be entitled to the same amount of parental leave as mothers – 16 weeks.

The Spanish parliament has this week agreed to a proposal put forward by the Podemos Party to standardise parental leave between mothers and fathers.

Currently, Spanish dads are entitled to 13 consecutive days off work, beginning two days before the birth, fostering or adoption of a child. And although this number increases to 20 days if the family has three or more children, it is still some way short of the 16 weeks’ maternity leave that mothers are entitled to…

The existing arrangement does allow mothers to transfer 10 of their 16 weeks paid leave to fathers, but under the new law this will no longer be the case considering that just 2% of couples ever exercised that option.

So what does this mean? Well, it brings Spain in line with much of Europe, and ensures that couples can better manage early parenting duties in a more equitable manner. Companies are to be compensated by the government for the time away from work – and this has proven something of a sticking point for Spain’s more conservative parties.

The Popular Party (PP), headed by interim Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, has long been against equality in parental leave, fearing that such a move increases costs for the government. However, Podemos’s argument, accepted by a majority in Parliament, is that both the Spanish constitution and EU law prohibit discrimination on grounds of gender.

With the very issue of Spain’s government still in limbo, the actual budgeting of the new law will likely be delayed until a new Prime Minister is appointed. If, in the unlikely scenario the PP secure enough votes in the third general election to earn a majority, then this ruling could be short-lived.

Far more likely is that a grand coalition comprising a more left-leaning influence will ensure that parliament’s ruling stays, and finally sees Spain come good on a law it first promised to introduce in 2009, before a double-dip recession hit, thus dampening the appetite for the law.

The ruling comes at a good time for Spain. The date of October 21 is often calculated as the day upon which women in the country effectively “work for free” for the rest of the year – a rather clumsy measure of the country’s gender pay gap.

The data upon which this imbalance is calculated is taken across the entire adult population and deduces that women are paid 19.3% less than men. However, as the Spanish constitution and EU law rightly states, there can be no gender discrimination in the country, so the notion that women are purposefully paid less than men for the same job is misleading.

However, what the October 21 date does signify is how cultural and social norms have often demanded of women to leave the workplace early or cut down their hours significantly in order to care for the family. This mindset is also a reason why many women fail to pursue more high-paying careers, or complete tertiary education, thus further limiting their earning potential.

With new fathers now able to take just as much paid leave as mothers, the hope is that this imbalance can start to redress itself over time.