Written evidence from the Fawcett Society [SPL0045]

Summary

1. Our submission focuses on the current issues in the Paternity Leave and Shared Parental Leave scheme, and what reform The Fawcett Society considers is required, based on our extensive evidence.
2. Fawcett’s research has consistently shown that our parental leave system is a key cause of the motherhood penalty, gender pay gap and inequality in Britain. Our maternity pay is too low. Our paternity or second parent leave allocation is one of the shortest and worst paid in Europe. Our shared parental leave system is complicated and costly.
3. With mothers continuing to be locked out of the workforce, and an unclear system blocking fathers and second parents from caring for their children equally, families are at huge disadvantage socially as well as financially. This submission draws on existing Fawcett Society research and policy development, as well as highlighting research and policy asks from partner organisations.

To what extent has the statutory shared parental leave scheme given parents (including different-sex and same-sex parents, adoptive parents, and parents through surrogacy) choice and flexibility in how they share parenting responsibilities in the first year?

4. The SPL scheme, introduced in 2015, was supposed to offer parents flexibility and choice in sharing up to 50 weeks of leave and 37 weeks of pay during their child's first year. However, Fawcett Society research has highlighted that the scheme's impact has been limited.
1. According to Maternity Action statistics, take-up of the SPL scheme itself has been very low. Of the 285,000 assumed eligible fathers, between 2015 and 2022, only less than 47,000 fathers had taken shared parental leave[1].
2. Furthermore, in their analysis, Maternity Action make clear that as of 2022, the levels of take-up had not been lifted to the original target of 25%, a target that had been agreed by the previous Government as a benchmark of success of the scheme[2].

5. This low uptake suggests that many parents do not feel empowered to use the flexibility intended by the policy. As a result of a lack of financial incentives and cultural norms, the current system does very little to shift the dial on equal sharing of care between two parents. This means that women or primary parents are still taking on the lion-share of early years childcare with consequences for the gender pay gap and gender inequality explored below.

6. The SPL system is part of a broader parental leave system that is not serving the best interests of gender equality and children’s development. Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) is well below the living wage and many mothers do not qualify for it at all. For those in receipt of SMP, after receiving 90% of your average weekly earnings for 6 weeks, the rate then drops to £184.03 a week, or remains at 90% of average weekly earnings for 33 weeks – whichever is lower. This is less than half (46%) of the national living wage for a 35-hour work week.

7. At the same time, fathers and second parents are allowed just two-weeks of paid statutory paternity (SPP) leave paid at 90% of earnings or the statutory rate, one of the lowest allocations in the OECD. This is inadequate time to support a partners’ recovery from birth and bond with a new child.
8. Fawcett’s research has found that this system is not reflective of how parents want to be involved in the first year of their child’s life. Our 2016 Parent, Work and Care report[3], the research suggests:
1. Men more likely to feel they did not have enough time off at the birth of their child, with 41% of fathers feeling they did not have enough time off, compared to 36% of mothers[4].
2. Men are less likely than women to be satisfied with the amount of time they took. 55% of men feel the amount of time was about right compared to 61% of women[5]
3. This has consequences for the amount of unpaid childcare mothers conduct beyond the first year of a child’s life. In this same report, despite fathers wanting to spend more time off after the birth of their child, our research found that the proportion of care still lay predominantly with mothers: when asked about tasks relating to: taking their child to the dentist, doctor or hairdresser, taking their children to school, taking time off when their child was ill, washing the children’s clothes, cooking their meals and doing bath and bedtime and organising their child’s birthday party, men were more likely to say that they were mostly the responsibility of their child’s other parent.
4. This has consequences for women’s time for paid work and contributes to what campaigners call the ‘double shift’ of paid work and unpaid domestic labour, a key driver of the gender pay gap.

9. The system is particularly impractical for low-income parents. Low-income fathers find the current low rates of pay of SPP and SPL to be an additional barrier to take-up with The Dad Shift citing that only 5% of those who took up shared parental leave were from the bottom 50% of earners[6].

What have been the longer-term equality impacts of the scheme, for example, on equal sharing of responsibilities for children as they grow up, and wider domestic responsibilities?

10. The current parental leave system does not support sharing of care in the first year of a child’s life and therefore has consequences for who cares for them most as they grow up. The limited participation of fathers and second partners in SPL has meant that traditional gender roles in childcare and domestic responsibilities remain largely unchallenged and unchanged in the first year of a child’s life. It is essential that mothers have adequate time to recover from birth and both parents time to bond with and care for a new child. The SPL system does not allow for especially the latter to happen.

11. This dynamic creates longer-term equality impacts, particularly related to the gender-pay gap and women’s labor market participation. Where domestic responsibilities remain largely unchanged, these norms become only further embedded, rendering mothers as the default caregivers. As this norm sticks with mothers throughout their child’s life, even once returning to the workforce women still end up taking on more domestic labor than men. Women’s Budget Group research outlines that women carry out around 60% more unpaid work than men, with women spending around twice as much time on cooking, childcare and housework than men[7].

12. These imbalances have severe knock-on effects when looking at the gender pay gap, productivity and economic growth. In Fawcett’s Equal Pay Day research, we found that the mean full-time gender pay gap currently sits at 11.3%, up from 10.4% in 2023[8]. As it stands, women are therefore earning £631 less a month than men[9]. This is contributing to injustice and stagnant economic growth.

13. It is also important to note that the current system reduces fathers’ ability to contribute equally to the care of their children. Not only does this disadvantage their partner in the short term but could contribute to longer term impact of a father’s relationship with their child. As outlined above, fathers feel that they do not have enough time off at the birth of their child. As this extends throughout the child’s life, this relationship may only be impacted further. Research conducted in 2015 found that 60% of fathers felt that shared parental leave would allow them to form a closer bond with their child[10] but most cannot afford to do so.

What have been the labour market impacts of the scheme, particularly for women?

17. Due to the low uptake of SPL by fathers, women continue to bear the brunt of childcare responsibilities, which adversely affects their career progression and contributes to the persistent gender pay gap. Due to this lack of take-up, the scheme inadvertently continues to place a disproportionate amount of the childcare responsibilities with women, impeding their ability to participate fully in the labour market – this contrasts with countries with more than six weeks of paid paternity leave, who have a 4% smaller gender wage gap and a 3.7% smaller labour force participation gap[11].

18. The SPL scheme itself has been designed with a lack of incentive for fathers to take up the offer. In the 2023 Shared Parental Leave Evaluation the Government outlined that for male employees who want to spend with their new child, there is often a trade off with maintaining income. This direct competition can then make decision making less straightforward, and disincentivises second parents to take up the scheme. This is both cause and consequence of the gender pay gap.

19. Fawcett is delighted to hear the new Chancellor’s ambition to close the gender pay gap, which is currently stagnant. Tackling the parental leave system will be essential to this in order to reverse the negative labour market impacts of the current system. On Equal Pay Day 2024 The Fawcett Society therefore called on government to draft and deliver a ten-year strategy to reduce the gender pay gap, including by introducing a simpler parental leave system for parents, regardless of employment status, where each parent has an individual right to time off and pay reserved just for them with payments increased substantially and kept in line with the cost of living.

Why has take-up of statutory shared parental leave been low, and what could be done to increase take-up?

20. Several factors contribute to the low take-up of SPL:

1. Financial constraints: Statutory paternity pay is often insufficient, deterring fathers from taking extended leave. Data from Pregnant Then Screwed found that for 1 in 5 dads, no parental leave options were available to them following the birth or adoption of their child – of those that were entitled to some leave, but returned to work early, 43% cited financial hardship as the reason for not taking their full entitlement[12].
2. Cultural norms: Persistent traditional views about gender roles discourage men from assuming primary caregiving responsibilities. This is however in stark contrast to 2018 statistics from Business in the Community who reported that 85% of men think they should be as involved as women in caring for children, yet at the time women were still eight times as likely to take the main caring role[13].

21. To address these issues, the Fawcett Society advocates for:

1. Paid and protected paternity leave: implementing three months of non-transferable leave for fathers, paid at a sufficient rate to make it financially viable.
2. Flexible working: Mandating that all jobs be advertised as flexible from day one, unless there are solid business reasons not to.
3. Enhanced statutory maternity and paternity pay: increasing rates of both SMP and SPP and ensuring that all parents can access them to guarantee financial viability.

22. These measures would help to create a cultural shift where both parents are equally likely to take time off for childcare, thereby promoting gender equality. The system by design does not make it easy for families to navigate, understand entitlements, or how to maximise their allowance in a way that makes financial sense[14]. A push for clarity in a reformed system would be hugely benefit families and in turn help with take-up of SSP.

23. Fawcett continues to campaign for a simpler system for all parents regardless of employment status where each parent has an individual right to time off and pay reserved just for them with payments increased substantially and kept in line with the cost of living. This will support fathers to take on more of the early caring responsibility for their children leading to lifetime benefits for all family members.

How can inequalities in take-up of shared parental leave, including by ethnicity, income, qualification level, and occupational status, be addressed?

17. According to the Government’s own analysis ‘parents who take up SPL and pay are more likely to be older, of white ethnicity, highly qualified, work in large organisations, earn a higher income, and have progressive gender role attitudes, compared to parents who do not take up SPL and pay’ – therefore a concerted effort must be made to ensure that fathers and second parents who are younger, from ethnically diverse backgrounds, in low skilled and precarious low-paid work are targeted.

18. For Black and minoritised women, the effects of motherhood are compounded by existing inequalities and racism experienced throughout the career pipeline. Fawcett’s research from 2016 outlined that women of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage are the least likely to receive supplementary maternity pay from their employers and are amongst the groups least likely to receive any paid leave because of their employment status (either being self-employed, in temporary employment or zero hours contracts)[15].

19. To mitigate these disparities, we recommend:

a.        Enhancing statutory paternity pay to make leave financially accessible for all fathers, regardless of income.

b.       Ensuring that parental leave policies encourage uptake across different communities.

• By reforming flexible working arrangements and shifting workplace norms this creates more opportunity fathers and second parents to consider the option of taking up policies like shared parental leave.

c.        Conducting targeted outreach to inform underrepresented groups about their rights and the benefits of shared parental leave.

Are there potentially more effective alternatives to the current "maternal transfer" model of shared parental leave?

20. Yes, all over the world non-transferable or ‘use it or lose it’ leave systems work better to redistribute early years care, ensure both parents can bond with children and allow parents to return to work.

21. As an alternative to the maternal transfer model, we propose a model of standalone, non-transferable leave for fathers. This approach allocates a specific portion of leave exclusively to fathers, encouraging them to take an active role in early childcare without relying on the mother to transfer part of her leave.

22. We also support a further approach that could also be considered and backed by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in their most recent Caring Penalty report. Their proposed model doesn’t involved mothers sacrificing maternity leave but instead provided a mix of longer paternity leave and an element of additional leave that can be shared or used by one partner[16].

Which countries have most effectively incentivised equal parenting and wider gender equality through their approaches to parental leave? What would be the costs and benefits of replicating these approaches in the UK?

23. Countries like Sweden and Iceland have been successful in promoting equal parenting through policies that include non-transferable, well-paid leave for both parents.
1. For instance, Sweden offers 480 days of parental leave per child, with 90 days reserved exclusively for each parent. This structure encourages both parents to participate in childcare, leading to more balanced domestic responsibilities and greater gender equality in the workplace.
24. Another country that has completely redesigned and revolutionised its paternity leave system is Spain. Work from The Dad Shift outlines that around eight years ago, Spain’s paternity leave system and uptake was almost on par with where the UK’s is now. Today, Spain’s paternity leave is 16 weeks at full pay.
1. In 2017, pat leave sat at two weeks in Spain, before the government increased this allowance to four weeks. From 2018, the Spanish Government decided to increase 100% paid pat leave each year every four years. Increasing from 5 weeks to 8 weeks to 12 weeks and finally to 16 weeks from 2018-2021.
2. Since 2021, the number of days parental leave taken is now equal between both women and men. This demonstration of dad’s taking full advantage of a robust and fully paid system is one that the UK Government could take learnings from – especially considering the phased increase over a four-year period.

25. Replicating such models in the UK could yield significant benefits, including:

a.        Close the gender pay gap and breaking entrenched gender norms: encouraging fathers to take leave can help normalise shared childcare responsibilities, reducing the career impact on mothers.

b.       Enhanced child development: increased paternal involvement has been linked to positive outcomes in children's cognitive and emotional development.

c.        Economic gains: facilitating women's continued participation in the workforce can boost overall economic productivity.

February 2025