CHILE: Paternity Leave – Five Short Days Represent a Huge Step Forward

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Sep 13 2005 (IPS) - Mauricio Muñoz’s second child will be born in October. But this time around, he will be able to stay home with his wife during the first five days after the birth, thanks to a new paternity leave law that just went into effect in Chile.

“When my daughter Mónica was born three years ago, I was only able to accompany my wife at the clinic. Now, after Daniel is born, I won’t only be with her for the first few days, but I’ll have to learn how to change diapers, prepare the bottle and bath, and cook for the whole family, according to the jokes of my co-workers,” Muñoz, a 36-year-old bank employee, told IPS.

That is what happened to Víctor Venegas, the first Chilean to benefit from the new paternity leave law. His son Matías came into the world at 10:32 AM on Sep. 2, the day that the bill, signed into law by President Ricardo Lagos on Aug. 24, entered into effect.

Before that, new fathers could only take a day off for the birth of their child. The new law expands that to five days of paid leave, which also now apply to cases of adoption and to unmarried fathers.

The law does not apply to those who are self-employed or who work in the informal sector of the economy, or – obviously – to the unemployed. For that reason, Labour Minister Yerko Ljubetic estimated that the five-day paternity leave will apply to 60 percent of the average 230,000 births a year in Chile, a country of nearly 16 million.

Fathers must take the four additional days of leave during the first month after the birth of the child. They cannot opt out of the benefit. During the leave, the father’s normal wages are paid by the employer.

On average, fathers will take advantage of paternity leave twice in their lives, based on the birth rate in Chile, President Lagos noted.

Lissette Albornoz, Venegas’s wife, said she was “extremely pleased” with the new law. “With my other kids I was alone (in the first few days after the birth). I’m happy that I’ll have my husband with me now,” she told the newspaper Las Ultimas Noticias.

“This legislation is a step forward in terms of equality and equal opportunities for men and women, especially in the new climate marked by the growing incorporation of women into the world of labour,” said the National Women’s Service Minister Cecilia Pérez.

In the early 1990s, women represented 28 to 30 percent of the workforce in Chile, a proportion that has risen to 38 percent today.

But while that represents an advance, it is still below the average for Latin America and is even lower than the rate in industrialised countries, Lagos pointed out.

Carmen Torres, editor of the on-line women’s news journal Mujereshoy, put out by the organisation Isis Internacional, told IPS that this law “certainly denotes progress in terms of gender equality, because we must not forget that the bill was introduced by three male lawmakers, which demonstrates that there has been a cultural change among men, who today want to participate more in raising their children.”

The bill’s sponsors were legislators Camilo Escalona of the Socialist Party and Rodolfo Seguel of the Christian Democracy Party – which form part of the ruling centre-left coalition – and Felipe Salaberry of the Independent Democratic Union, one of the parties making up the right-wing opposition alliance.

The bill, which was presented in July 2003, was co-sponsored by a total of 11 of the 120 members of the Chamber of Deputies – 10 men and one woman – representing both the governing coalition and the opposition.

Uca Silva, a researcher of gender issues with the non-governmental organisation Sur Profesionales, agreed that the five-day paternity leave represented a step forward. “But,” she told IPS, “an advance in gender questions does not necessarily mean progress towards equality.”

“Most studies on the growing flexibility of gender roles have found that it is specifically in the area of child rearing where the changes have been seen. That is where men are taking on new tasks, involving growth in their affective world and the taking on of shared responsibilities,” she said.

But Alejandra Valdés, with the consultancy firm Exagrama Consultoras, said she saw the new law as an advance towards gender equality.

“It responds to the demand for policies of shared responsibility in child rearing, on the part of society as well as parents, given that maternity and child care has up to now been the sphere shared by most women in this country,” Valdés remarked to IPS.

The five-day paternity leave “provides the conditions for men to form stronger emotional bonds with their children,” and “the fact that it applies to both adoptive parents is clearly an advance in the expansion of reproductive rights for men,” she added.

In an on-line survey of 5,322 women, 46 percent said they approved of the paternity leave law, while another 46 percent said five days were too little.

Chile’s paternity leave law basically puts this country in the vanguard in Latin America, although it was preceded by Cuba and Uruguay.

In the region, Cuba has the most advanced paternity leave registration, with a Family Code in effect since the 1970s that allows fathers to stay at home with the baby while the mother works.

The paid leave was more recently extended to one year, which can be taken by either the father or the mother.

Uruguay, meanwhile, provides for two weeks paid paternity leave, but only for public employees.

In both Uruguay and Chile, women are entitled to 90 days paid maternity leave, part of which can be taken before the birth if desired.

Chile’s new paternity leave law applies to the public as well as the private sector, where some companies, like U.S. computer giant IBM, already adopted flexible parental leave plans last year.

In Europe, fathers are entitled to three weeks paternity leave in Spain and France, while in Sweden, parents have the right to 390 days of paid leave, which can be split up between the father and mother as they see fit. (In practice, mothers make use of most of the parental leave).

Carmen Torres and Uca Silva agree that five days of paternity leave is too short, although they said Chile is not in a position to offer policies of extended parental leave like those of Cuba or Sweden.

“Cultural changes are slow, and I believe that many men would not agree to stay at home caring for their child while the mother worked outside of the home,” said Torres. “It is the young men of today, who are more open to change, who could accept that, and it should be them who sponsor future legislation in that direction.”

Silva said that while five days are insufficient for the family, offering lengthier paid paternity leave would put a burden on both the state and businesses. Although in Chile there is wide agreement – at least in discourse – that men and women are equal, there is no comparison with the labour conditions and social pacts of Cuba and Sweden, she underlined.

For her part, Alejandra Valdés said “Maternity leave not only involves the woman’s relationship with her job, but also the process of biological changes and recovery that her body goes through and the hours needed for nursing the baby in the first few months of its life.”

In her view, the cost of parental leave should fall on society as a whole. But from that point of view, total equality between men and women would have an economic impact due to the cost of financing both paternal and maternal leave, when there are more pressing matters to attend to, like improving pensions for retirees, she argued.