Posted: July 14th, 2022

Paid Parental Leave

Scenario
You have been asked by your company to talk to a group of political leaders here in the United states. As you scan the crowd, you see only a few women in the audience. One week later, you give the same talk and Sweden and find their a lot more women in the crowd. You ask yourself why.
Review the following statistics for women in government:
In the United States in 2015, women held 20% of the seats in Congress (Rutgers, 2017)
2014, women held 43.6% of the seeds in the swedish Parliament (Sweden, 2017
Journal Entry:
Rite aid journal entry which is two page double-spaced in length that addresses the following questions you are not required to include a cover page but if you refer to information from another sources be sure to provide in text citations in accordance with APA requirements.
1. Description:you social policy such as parental leave affect how many women serve in government and other jobs? How?
2. Interpretation and reflection:what are the benefits of paid parental leave for society, for the population, and for health? What types of changes, if any do you think the United States should make to its current parental leave policy?
Paid Parental Leave
Name
Institution
Date

Paid Parental Leave
There is a persistent gender gap that exists in many OECD countries regarding employment and wages. The gaps mostly appear prominently around childbirth, which is a phenomenon known as the child penalty. According to the results of a study done in 2015, only twenty percent of the women in the United States held seats in congress. In 2014, forty-three point six of the women in Sweden had seats in the Swedish parliament. Another study shows that forty percent of the women experience career interruptions within ten years after graduation, while only ten percent experience the same. When it comes to part-time jobs, forty percent of the women stop working compared to five percent of the men in part-time jobs.
According to the Maternity Benefit Act, women who are employed are entitled to a maximum of twelve weeks, equivalent to eighty-four days of maternity leave. In those twelve weeks, six weeks are given to post-natal leave (Ruhm, 2017). in case of medical termination of pregnancy or a miscarriage, female workers are entitled to six weeks of paid leave in the United States. There are both advantages and disadvantages of having parental leave to women in government and other working places. For instance, the advantage is that these women can take care of their newborn babies or newly adopted children and also gives them time off when the parent, child, or the spouse of the employee is ill. The disadvantage is that there could be a lack of provision during this period of leave. They end up going back to work before their leave is over, leaving their children under the care of other people.
According to research, there are several benefits of paid parental leave to society and health (Goodman, Elser & Dow, 2020). Paid parental leave impacts health since it helps to reduce rates of infant mortality and stress and depression that occurs to mothers after giving birth. It also promotes the reduction in preterm delivery and children with low birth weight; there are higher immunization rates and increased breastfeeding rates. It promotes gender equality in society since it considers the importance of both infants and their parents’ time to bond. When parents spend more time with their infants during a paid parental leave, they can take good care of them, reducing the infants’ mortality rates hence helping the population grow.
In conclusion, women in decision making positions may help raise and support issues that affect them, like paid parental leave. That brings us to changes that need to be made in the current paid parental leave policies in the United States. Bill proposed that more than two million Americans would have mandatory access to paid parental leave that would provide federal workers with twelve weeks of guaranteed paid time off in terms of childbirth, adoption, or child fostering (Rossin-Slater & Uniat, 2019). Other suggestions stated that new parents could delay taking their social security benefits in exchange for two months of paid benefits. Other people expressed concerns that a paid leave program would be funded by social security benefits that could lead to other fund uses.
The changes that could be made are separating the social security benefits from paid parental leave. The suggestion of partly paying the paid parental leave from contributions made by both the employer and employees should also be reviewed since the employers should only pay this to show support and appreciation. Trump had signed the bill that proposed paid parental leave to parents at childbirth, adoption, and child fostering that was mandatory for twelve weeks, and that is already nice progress. Parents need to be given maximum support for them to be productive at their work stations and improve population, health, and the entire society regarding human rights.

References
Ruhm, C. J. (2017). A national paid parental leave policy for the United States. Driving Growth through Women’s Economic Participation, 107.
Goodman, J. M., Elser, H., & Dow, W. H. (2020). Among Low-Income Women In San Francisco, Low Awareness Of Paid Parental Leave Benefits Inhibits Take-Up: The study examines the impact of the San Francisco Paid Parental Leave Ordinance, the first in the United States to provide parental leave with full pay. Health Affairs, 39(7), 1157-1165.
Rossin-Slater, M., & Uniat, L. (2019). Paid family leave policies and population health. Health Affairs Health Policy Brief.

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