E110 – Parental Leave (w Alison Koslowski)

This is the world of work Podcast with James and James. You music. Hello. This is James, and this is Jane,

and here we are again today with another episode of a world of work podcast. We've got an exciting one. What are we speaking about

today? Jane, okay, so today we have a guest from Edinburgh University, just down the road from us, and we are talking to Alison Kozlowski, and we're talking all about the thorny issue of parental leave, and specifically trying to understand the issue of parental leave and gender equality.

That's right, we've got a conversation exploring a broader topic, but also looking a little bit of a role of paternal leave and what that contributes to the gender equality that we have or don't have, as well as some of the things our organizations can do to shift the dial on that. So let's get into the conversation. Okay, so here we are in the main body of today's conversation, and we're really lucky today to be speaking to Alison Koslowski, and we're going to be exploring gender equality more broadly and then focusing in a little bit on the role of parental leave in shaping equality and some of the things that perhaps our organizations and we working in organizations can do to have some influence on this domain before we get into some of that detail, though. Alison, would you be able to introduce yourself to the audience and say a bit more about yourself and your background and the things that you're working on at the minute?

Yeah. Hi, James, Hi Jane. I'm a Professor of Social Policy and Research Methods at the University of Edinburgh, and also an honorary visiting professor at University College London. And my field of research is parental leave policy in international perspective. I also work as a consultant and advisor with organizations interested in improving gender equality outcomes, particularly with regard to parental leave. Just recently, with colleagues, we've published the 2020 international review of leave policies and research, which covers 45 countries at the moment, and that's an open access resource. And this year, we've also included a summary of COVID related policy responses to supporting parents and other other carers. That's excellent.

And I've heard you speak before about some of the reports from prior years, and I think we'll get on to some of that detail in a minute. But I'd like to start a conversation quite broadly and ask, what is gender equality? What does it what does it really mean to you? And how does it appear when there is equality? Well,

there are certainly different ways to think about and to understand gender equality. For me in relation to parental leave, in particular, gender equality is a situation where gender doesn't play a role in the opportunities that a person has to take leave and to care and that at least across the whole population, there would be a very similar number of men and women taking leave for a similar amount of time. So it might not be that every parenting team, if you like, shares the leave evenly between them, but that on average across a whole population, there wouldn't be a gender gap,

right? So we're really looking at that sort of stepped up view. When we look across a broad population, we see parity within that. Yes,

exactly. So there's still room for people to play it, if you like, as they like that, everybody has to be identical in how they how they divide things. But on average, you wouldn't see, you wouldn't see a gender gap. Sure?

How do things look at the minute? Do you have a sense of where we are on that equality or lack of equality?

Well, it depends what particular aspect of gender gap you're interested in. I'm interested in gender care gap, sure, which is sizing the other side of the coin from the gender pay gap. And the gender care gap is still pretty big, either a global perspective, or across different countries, though, there is certainly variation, and that variation is very interesting because it shows that it's not fixed in stone, right? And when we say very big roughly, what are we speaking about? So

these things are quite difficult to measure, of course, one organization that does spend a lot of time doing this is the European Institute for Gender Equality, and they have some really excellent sort of infographics, if people want to check them out, that would would sort of try and estimate these, these gender care gaps. So I'm just thinking about care gap in time spent on care and leisure activities. So in a place like Sweden, it. Might be that thinking of 100 was perfect gender equality, then where it's sort of around 80 or 90. So not bad country, like not picking on any country in particular, although comes to mind that would be more down around sort of 40

out of 100 Wow. So that's a huge variation, and so that's specifically within, I guess, for the equality of care provided within for domestic setting. Is that fair?

Yes, it's the time spent in caring and leisure activities. So that's the measure they use. So that's on the European Institute for Gender Equality website. People want to get the apps, and so make sure I've got the right figures.

I'm sure, I'm sure there, if we sort of step back and think about some of the causes behind that, do you think you know that work plays a role in that? I mean, how does, how does work fit within our shaping of care and that form of equality? So,

I mean, unsurprisingly, I think the culture of our workplaces reflects the culture of our home lives. So responsibility doesn't lie with with one domain or the other. But that doesn't mean that there isn't still a lot to be done. So I think maybe Firstly, we need to think about how we'll see how our formal work, if you like, paid work, is reflecting cultural gender norms. So we draw on strong gendered norms to make sense of our world. So you can think of norms as unquestioned understandings that we all use, if you like, for better or for worse. So one example would be the understanding that girls and boys are differently suited for different types of jobs. And so we see, we do see strong patterns of what we call occupational sex segregation. If we just think of the usual stereotypes. There are very few female computer scientists or games programmers still, and there are very few male nurses or care workers. And there are loads of examples that you can draw on. So we see then this acceptance that men and women are different that's quite hard to challenge. So there are female mechanics and there there are male nursery teachers, but it's not so easy for them, often to go against against the grain, and this occupational sex segregation certainly goes some way. I think, in explaining the gender gaps that we we see gender pay gaps, because we know that organizations that are, say, female dominated or male dominated, have different patterns around the way they support people with with caring, yeah. And then secondly, I would say, within organizations, there might be these gendered ideas about the support that employers employees need so that mothers take along maternity leave is not often questioned, yeah. And if they make it past maternity discrimination, at least the organization would tend to rally around and make it happen, at least in the UK, I think, and but the Fathers will take a similar leave. Just not is just not a thing, yeah, okay, in many organizations, so they're not not ready to handle the request. So if women are taking time out for caring responsibilities more often than men, then these colleagues are no longer the same, right? And then that gets reflected in career progression. So that's so there's these two the two things do sort of obviously feed off each other and sort of reinforce existing patterns.

Yeah, okay, and when we're looking at trends within this, do you see trend progression over the last, I guess, several decades, in relation to both equality in the workplace, be it through, you know, gender pay gap, which I know is a topic that many people are exploring, but also in terms of our perceptions and the permissibility of genders in different roles. Do you see progress? I mean, what's your view

on that? Yeah. I mean, definitely. So I think for a long time, the focus has maybe been on increasing female labor market participation. So there's a lot of variation across countries still in terms of the participation rates of women and as full time workers and whether they're working part time. So men still predominantly of full time workers, and there's much more variation across countries in women's patterns. And we definitely see an increase, pretty much across all countries, in the number of women and particularly mothers in the labor market. So that's been a change. We've also seen an increase in terms of fathers caring, but perhaps not to the same degree as mothers labor market participation. And there's been a lot more focus on measures, I suppose, to support women in getting into the labor market, but not necessarily supporting fathers to with their caring responsibilities. But I would say there's a but one of the things that there's been quite a lot of research just in the last few months on the impact of COVID and people have been conducting studies around what, how that impacts on kind of the division of care, child care, and domestic work and paid work. And I. Piger, as I mentioned, to the European Institute of gender equality, have flagged up some concern that we might be starting to go backwards in terms of this progression towards gender equality. Yeah, that's

really interesting. I think I've seen some of the things coming out recently in sort of the popular press around people's experience. I wanted to ask you about a slightly longer term trend that I've seen covered recently, and whether it's got any relevance here. So I saw something recently that suggests that in several countries, not all, but in several western countries, there is a long term trend that parents time spent caring for their children is on the increase, on an average per day, so that people are spending, fundamentally, as a household, a little bit more time with their children they used to do. You think that presents sort of an additional challenge for the gap that we see, because whilst roles or people that have genders that are traditionally associated with less time with children. So for example, in the UK, fathers might be spending more time with their children and taking on more caring responsibilities because the total expectation and Norm has gone up. It means that, really, that Gap's still there and not decreasing. And I wondered if that's something that you've seen, or how that plays into the research that's going on.

Yeah, that's so you're sort of pointing to intensification of parenting. So it's not something I'm an expert on, but I've certainly seen research papers that suggest this as a nice paper. Think it's by Bianchi and saya in looking at using time use data, and they found that if you like a housewife from the 1970s who wouldn't be working was actually spending less time on childcare than a full time working mother. I can't remember the exact date, but in the sometime in the sort of maybe around 2010 something like that, that's phenomenal. Yeah. So there's definitely been an intensification or change in our parenting practices, and I'm sure that that will will sort of feed into this as well. I guess the question would be, again, even if there has been an intensification, why? Why is that gendered?

Yeah, absolutely, and, and why? I guess that's what so I find so interesting, is, why is it effectively? And you know, this would take research, and is is an initial reflection is, if you know the traditional role that is spending less time, so that, in the UK, the man is or the husband is, spending less of less time than the woman, but has upped overall. Why is that not replacing the other care, but instead adding on to it, if you see what I mean. So why is the growth? Because it seems to me that that if, if there are significant shifts in the way that we're parenting as whole, but it's doing nothing to redress the gender balance or the gender equality, then it seems to sort of ask, why are we looking at how we parent as a whole, to really think about how that could work better for everyone? And I think when you the COVID thing you mentioned is really important, because I'm not close to the research at all, but what I see around me and my clients and the organizations I work with absolutely would would mean that what you're saying is unsurprising to me, that we might be seeing a shift backward, and especially when you've got that disproportionate number of women in part time roles or in more flexible time based roles, and which means that it, you know, by nature, those those roles also tend to be the ones that shrink down and up when there's things like lockdowns, I would imagine, yeah,

yeah. I think one time when, we think about time use, need to also factor in leisure time and also sleep as well. So I think it's even bigger than thinking about parenting practices, but it's also how almost of how we live our lives. It's these very big, big questions, which the time use data allow us to get to in the really interesting way.

Yeah, I think, I think time use, time use data, is fascinating, and there's not enough research. That's obviously it's quite a hard thing to access, but I suppose with technology, we're getting much better at starting to understand that. I wanted to just, just ask you a question. I was I was reading, I was reading through the prep notes for the podcast, and I kept coming back to this question around how we see

the policies slowly improving in terms of the way that people can access paternal and maternal care in the UK, but that the noise, if you like, in the popular press appears to be that there is a reluctance, and certainly in some of the organizational gray literature, there seems to be a reluctance of men to take that parental leave in its entirety, or in a way that suits suits them. And I wondered if that's something that's backed up in the research, or if you have any thoughts on that, yeah,

well, I'm interested enough. As you use that policies are slowly improving, and I think that's part of the problem. I think you have to be a bit more radical in the change. I'm not sure that incremental, slow improvement is effective in in the in terms of leveling up men and women's access to leave, you either have access to leave or you don't having an extra few days here or there is not it's not sufficient. Or only having access to leave through eligibility from your partner is not the same as having individual entitlements. So I think there's a problem there in terms of policies slowly improving, and that is then linked to might be perceived as reluctance by men to use it, but I think it's, again, what is it that we're actually giving them to use, if you like, and if it's poorly paid, if there isn't any paternity cover, but there is maternity cover, these, these sort of things, then it's not a level playing field that we're creating. So we might need a sort of uneven playing field, given that the shift is changing. But I think, yeah, it's not. If there isn't dedicated individual entitlement for fathers, which there isn't in the UK, then it's not surprising that we don't see men taking it. And

I guess we if we think about that uneven playing field and what the entitlements are, if we look around for countries that you've looked at, how varied are they? I mean, what is a good, good state of parental leave policy, and what's a poor state? What are the sort of boundaries that we're looking at, maybe in Europe?

So I think it's simply that we need, if we want to, if we're aiming for a gender equal outcome, we have to start with gender equal opportunity, and we don't have that very often. In leave policies, there's a great book, actually, by Gail Kaufman, just out this year, called parental leave, the six month solution. She's based in the US, but she's considering UK and Sweden, and she's really advocating moving to the system of individual entitlement to leave that's not gendered, and sort of moving us beyond a primary carer model that there is one person that does the parenting, if you Like, in a parenting team. So in terms of what make what I think, I think other countries which have that Iceland has just reformed theirs so that you have, I think it's four months, four months father, four months and mother and four months to be shared between them. So that's not the bad level you've also got. In Sweden, they have the same number of days allocated. They call it the mommy quota and the daddy quota. And we know Norway has a similar system. And these, these where you have a mummy or daddy quota of days that can only be taken by that parent. Their father does take them pretty much. And when you take that quota away. Interestingly, what's happened in some countries, fathers have stopped taking it so so I just can't emphasize enough, I think that the importance of this individual entitlement of people to to leave it can't be something that you decide between you, or that follows the child. And

when we see sort of a shared approach, like there exists in many different countries. And what proportion of that time do you find is taken by the women? Is it? Is it almost exclusively, or is a bit less? And have you got any thoughts on what some of those other defining factors as to why that would be might

be so I was just looking at a paper yesterday around Sweden, where they do have pretty much even even Steven's accessibility to leave and women are taking three quarters of all days available still. So even if you like the best system that there is, more or less, you still see that that that quarter of the days, the quarter of days, as opposed to three to three quarters, is matching the daddy quota, interestingly. So, so again, it sort of is back to that. The other thing is around payment of leave as well. That's really important. So if you think in the UK, fathers don't have access to any leave that pays more than about 148 pounds a week, unless employers statutory living wage, right? So not a good time to take a big cut in income when you've just had a baby.

No, that totally makes sense. And if we think then about maybe some of the reasons that fathers aren't taking the leave when it maybe is available. We've talked a little bit there about the salary and the need for an employer top up to make it a reasonable amount of salary in a time of parenting. Are there any other reasons that you think make it harder for fathers, or make fathers less willing to take leave, or, you know, perceptions that they might feel? Yeah, I think, um.

I suppose it does matter, in a way, whether or not there is national level legislation. I think so. If so, the cultural context is important. So where you have equal leave policies, and it's something that everybody has to do. It becomes normal for certain behaviors, for men to take, as we've discussed at least part of the leave I think whether you where you don't have that national context, then workplaces which do have equal leave policy just sort of still pushing against, sort of, as we've discussed, the prevailing cultural, cultural currents which can can make it hard, but still, things you can definitely do are, we know that the role of line managers is really important, so you need to be able that's where it really happens that this, that decision to ask to take leave depends a lot on the relationship with with line managers. If line managers have been able to be role models in advance, the research would show that that makes a big difference again, in thinking whether you can ask for it without potentially sort of being penalized in some way. I

think that's really interesting. I was talking to someone who's done some research about bereavement when you're employed, and they found something very similar about the role of the line manager and the importance of all of that and how much unsaid is, how much that is unsaid is learned from the reactions of the line manager to other situations or to their own situations. I wanted to ask you a little bit about the case for why it's important so there is a good and well articulated moral case for trying to achieve equality in many of areas of work life. But one of the challenges, and one of the things that I've experienced in maybe not so forward looking organizations, is around like, Why? Why should we? Why should we encourage this? And I just wondered if you had any reflections on why organizational leaders should be pursuing, rather than just complying, should be actively pursuing supporting their staff to do this, and whether you know there's any evidence, for example, of when, when people take more parental leave, they they, you know, they are able to have better working working life balances, or similar Well,

I think the research that I've seen would suggest that it is correlated with with people being very more engaged. If they they feel people value these policies, and typically, they may take them they may prefer to stay in an organization. We did some research, and people in the organization were telling us that they, in a way, didn't mind taking the hit to their income by changing organizations, because this organization had particularly good leave policies that allowed them to live the lives that they wanted to leave with a sort of balance with their family working lives. So So I think a sort of loyalty and employee engagement is one, one advantage you would typically expect to see, and hopefully, then from engaged, and it's enthusiastic employees, you've got increased productivity. I think it's also in terms of, if you are invested in training people, then you're not wasting talent in the sense that you're less likely to lose talent. So it helps employers to retain talent and any investment they put into into training people, people stay, they come back, they recommend it to plan. There was a great example of how people were using it for recruitment as well. They were saving them money in recruitment costs because they were really selling their message about having good family support policies, that sort of thing. So those would be be some kinds of benefits as well, as if you do have targets to meet in terms of reducing gender pay gap. This is an obvious way to approach that. That

makes lots of sense. And I think, I think there's something we've talked before with guests around the idea of, I mean, it gets very called, variously bringing your whole self to work or not needing, feeling the need to mask and not not being able to manage your boundaries more effectively, even when things sort of cross over. And I just It strikes me that where organizations are able to recognize that the people that work for them have a full and diverse life beyond the the nine to five or the or the shift that they work and beyond the responsibilities, they appear to be much more able to appropriately support their employees, which seems to me, comes out, allows people to feel like they can invest more time and energy in parts of their career with a single organization. I just I wonder. I know we've seen a move away from the majority of people staying in one job for their entire lives, but I do wonder if it will be these policies, rather than high wages, that will be the breaker between whether people are able to be kept from kept in a relationship with a single organization for longer, and the the product, like you say, the productivity benefits that come with that. And do you, as a researcher, do you find organizations who are interested and want to engage with your research and want to solve the problem? Are they out there? Should? Should our listeners have hope that there are people that get that this important? Do you think?

I definitely think there is hope that I've met many organizations which are very interested in trying to do the best thing here.

One of the problems in the UK context is there isn't a level playing field, so where organizations go above and beyond what they are required to do that may have cost implications. Why they might want to do that. We've touched on lots of reasons. Resilient and healthy employees have supported with having good relationships in the round has many benefits. So there's reasons why you might try. But yeah, costing is certainly something for people to think about. I suppose maternity leave replacement has long been thought as a sort of training opportunity or recruitment opportunity, so extending that to paternity replacement cover is something to think about, and again, just moving on from, well, shifting, I suppose the burden of, oh no, as someone who's going to come in and take lots of leave, who happens to be a woman, in a way, if you share that burden across parents, then that doesn't get rid of the problem for the employers, but it makes it not a gender problem. And

I guess it sounds like there are a few things that if we do more at a national level would be helpful, and then a few things that if we did at a policy level within an organization where we can take decisions about spending, that we can we can lead to some changes here. What do you think some other things that individuals can do in the workplace? So maybe, if you had individual leaders in the workplace who had, maybe limited scope on some of a policy, but could engage with their people and do other things within their organizations. Is there anything that they could do that would help address some of these challenges? Yeah, I

think so. Depends on the size of your organization, but first thing is just to make sure that you are fully aware of what is available. So there's something called unpaid parental leave, which a lot of people just don't know exists, not most helpful in the sense that it's unpaid, but it's basically four weeks in a given year that parents can take on top of annual leave, which can really help with things like the school holidays. Wow.

And just that's something I didn't know about, is that something that's in a single year and a year of birth and multiple years? How does that work? It's something I wasn't aware of at all. Yeah. So

it's unpaid parental leave you can take. Think, I think it's 13 weeks. It's either 13 or 18 weeks, a maximum of four weeks per year, up to the child being 18. Wow, yeah, yeah. So this is, this is actually linked to a European Union directive on parental leave that required. So who knows? We might lose it

old news, right?

But still. So it's that's a good example of actually, my brother's just taken it so he moved to an organization in November last year. He had his first baby in February, so was not eligible for anything other that actually was not eligible for anything, because he hadn't been working there long enough. So he was he took annual leave for some paternity leave, but he really wanted to, partly, he's my brother. He had to, but he really wanted to have some leave experience, and so he's taken unpaid parental leave, and his organization hasn't understood it, so he's still been receiving his salary in the last month, because the HR just doesn't have a category box to tick for this unpaid rent. So back to your question, what could people do? Well, just basically find out what is available, make sure your HR kind of department is up to speed, and if they need support, then there are organizations that they can turn to as well for sort of best practice bringing it closer to home. I think it's just challenging. Maybe your ideas about who should do what around parenting, I've met quite esteemed colleagues in the not too distant past who just were flummoxed, really, with the idea that men might be involved in infant care. So I think that's still something to challenge, just checking that people do do appreciate that just because you're not the the. The birth mother, you may still be a key co carer, even in the early days. One of

the things that I hear sometimes people have a challenge with, or men have a challenge with, is if you take paternity leave, you kind of give up your seat at the table in the workplace, and obviously it's the same for maternity but if you do that for a shorter period of time, I sense I get is that sometimes men might find that threatening, or they lose part of their role, or they're worried about missing out, or they're worried about being a burden on others who need to cover for them, and all those types of things that are sometimes internal barriers to the decisions to take that leave. If you're an employer and people have those concerns, what types of things would you say to them, or what types of things might people be able to do to help overcome some of those challenges of preconception to concerns?

I think maybe, again, it's sort of looking at what the norm is in your organization, and if there's a norm for say, which would be quite generous, four weeks father's taking it, but six months of mothers then recognizing that you've got a real gendered pattern there. And is that kind of, why is that so? Conversations about it being explicit about the differences, and then that's very much correlated or linked with maternity replacement cover is still very usual. So you don't have this burden kind of that you're you're kind of lumping, lumping all your work onto your colleagues while you're away, possibly with a good, good reason. I mean, good, good good reason to be frightened that might be the case. So need to think about paternity replacement cover. But then for it to be worth it, you want fathers to be taken off time. So we're a little bit stuff, I think, between that and that is, organizations started to bring in this sort of six months leave for fathers. Aviva have done that. Diageo have done that recently. They it's very recent, literally, the last sort of 1212, months, 18 months. So they're still trying to work out what the impact is. But again, then, as you said, people can do is the role modeling and the all the things that are the good practice that's done with with mothers and returning mothers, sort of the keeping what's the keeping in touch days, that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. And I um, yeah, I suppose it's we've just you just got to keep pushing sometimes, until it becomes normal, or it becomes not normal, if you like, to not take the time when it's available. Yes,

I like the way of swapping it. So instead of it becoming normal, that becomes not normal to not do it, if that makes sense. I like that with the organizations that you work with and speak to at the minute. Do you think there is a level of role modeling and at senior levels? I mean, do you see that? Do you think that story is being told and that leader attention is being paid in this area? I guess

partly, it's a it's a life stage thing. So where you've had, do you have your most senior people at that stage in their lives, where they're having small children, and therefore, would you expect them to be remodeling it? So you do tend to see the modeling a bit bit lower down. I guess the famous examples would be people like Mark Zuckerberg. So he didn't take the full entitlement, but he did take a decent chunk. So I guess the signal he's sending is take a decent chunk, but don't take all of it absolutely and I suppose it comes again to this question of

it might be okay sometimes for people to prioritize if that's what they would want to do, staying at work or having a shorter leave, but why is it always gendered?

Yeah, and that's a fair question. And and like you said, we've got this sort of weight of history and cultural expectations behind us, which I think is a hard thing to change. And it feels like people want to but it feels listening to you describe it, it feels like almost one of those puzzles where you've got all the pieces in place, and each puzzle makes it a little bit harder to move another piece. So we've got, you know, cultural expectations, we've got state policy. We've got, you know, duration of leave. We've got role modeling. We've got all those bits that need to move, and it feels like it's hard to unlock any specific one if you were going to, if you had a magic wand and could change one thing and do that to help unlock some of this. What do you think that most powerful thing would be if you could strike a switch and shift something radically? I

would try and realize an integrated system of leave and childcare which is affordable and high quality. So in countries where we see this shifting in a good direction. We have set stuff, very heavily subsidized, high quality childcare available as soon as the leave comes to an end. So there isn't this gap of time where you kind of think, Oh, what do you do? So in the UK is sort of the fees are phenomenal, aren't they? So around 1000 pounds per month per child is not it's really huge. It's huge. And if you've got multiple children, it's It's phenomenal, yeah,

so it's not, and that's not, that's not normal, at least in not in the European context. So in other countries, like Germany, Sweden, you're talking about 140 150 euros a month. Phenomenal. That That makes a big difference. And also in Germany and Sweden, you have this, this 140 150 Euro high quality child care is available to integrate with the end of the leave period. So you don't have this gap. So that's that would be my, my, my first on my wish list.

I think that's a pretty good wish to have, because I think it's something that would it works for everyone, right? So it starts addressing some of the some of the underlying issues that are creating this gendered, gender difference. I wanted to ask you a question that occurs to me as we're talking about this, which I think you kind of alluded to earlier, but I just kind of want to spell it out for the audience and see if I've understood correctly. Do you think so within particularly small and medium sized organizations, but across the across the workforce, we see discrimination against mothers, and indeed, women of a certain age who are perceived to be potentially mothers of the future when they're being recruited. We still see that, right? We still there's lots of campaigns around people who are either pregnant and then feel that has been a factor in changing in their work some circumstances, or indeed, people that we still see cases of people not being hired because they are perceived to maybe have a baby in the future. And you know, there is an acknowledgement that in small and medium sized organization, it can be a bigger disruption, because there's less people to cover it, right? So there's less options. But I just It occurs to me that if we can change the societal norms to being more equal, we may see some of that discrimination completely disappear, because it would be a completely unfounded thing to assume, if you're interviewing someone, that the woman that you're interviewing is the one who's going to take the the lion's chunk of the the leave there would be because you wouldn't have those those imbalanced norms. And I just, it just strikes me that if we could do something about this situation and giving better access to parental leave, then for both genders, then suddenly we might sort of knock off yet another different issue around equality without even realizing it is that. Would that be a fair sort of supposition to sort of think about and reflect and look at? Yeah, I think you've summed it up really well, exactly. I think

what's interesting that was, you could potentially almost flip it and you'd have paternity discrimination instead of maternity discrimination, because logically, fathers are at risk for longer, or men are at risk in the risk group for becoming leave

my word. I hadn't even thought of that. But of course, return, you know, I assume you're referring to periods with which they traditionally are seen to be, on average, fertile, exactly. Yeah, amazing. I mean, not amazing, terrible, but an amazing thought that might come out of that would be a completely different and I really love that idea. And I think it plays to what James talked about about or I think actually both of you mentioned about how it's all interconnected, and if we start to move one thing, then slowly you see other things being released into the system. So yeah, thanks.

No, no welcome. And I think Gail Kaufman, the book I mentioned, she really describes this well, what you just saw, what you just outlined, that this sort of individual access to leave is really very helpful in many ways. Yeah,

excellent. I shall learn how to articulate that conversation better by going and reading her book. That sounds good. I'm going

to jump in and start to draw us to a close, because I think we are starting to run out of time before we wrap up. Finally, though, I just wanted to check in and see if you've got any things that you'd like to say to the audience at the end. Is there anything else that people can do to get in touch with you or to find out more about you, or to

learn about the work that you're doing? Well, certainly do take a look at the leave Network page if you're if you're curious about the many different ways that parental leave policies can be designed. So that's WWW dot leave network.org, please get in touch on on LinkedIn, or you can look at my web page hosted by the University of Edinburgh. If you Google Alison Koslowski and parental leave, that should work,

excellent. Okay, well, it's been a pleasure. So thank you very much. We'll share some more details when we promote this, and until then, it's a big thank you for me, yeah, and it's a big thank you for me. Thank you very much.

Okay, so you are back in the room with Jane and I. And that was our conversation with Alison, where we started to explore some of authority issues to do with gender equality, specifically focusing on parental leave, and perhaps a little bit more focused on paternity leave and some of the things that we do as a society and an organization to shape our paternity leave and influence the ways that we divide some of our caring responsibilities in society. Jane, did you have anything that really struck you in that conversation, or anything you want to reflect on?

I guess there's two things that really struck me, and they're things that strike me quite a lot when we talk about issues, particularly around benefits or work life balance or other, you know, other domains how work interacts with other domains of your life. And the first is that social norms are incredibly influential, right? We all think we're going to behave a certain way, but actually, if the expectation of our society or our peers is different, we behave differently. And the second, which I still, I just need to spend a lot more time on, is this interrelationship between compliance and regulatory change and behavioral change. And I think, I think the reason I'm interested in that for two reasons, for two reasons, but especially in this conversation, because she's talking about the compliance being much more prescriptive, to give them less flexibility, but more directional. So this is your leave, and you can take it, but at the same time, we know that compliance alone doesn't work. We need we need the behavior and the social norm shifting. And I still can't quite get to grips with where I stand on how those two things can be managed to improve behavior change on a mass scale in the equality and diversity and inclusion space. Yeah,

there's some great comments in there, and I think I had some similar reflections along the way, I kept thinking about sort of libertarian paternalism, and how does, how does what we're doing give people some choice or not give them choice? And what mix of those things do we need to have when we're looking to change these things? Um, I guess the sort of takeaway for me was it felt like when we were talking through this, this was a great example of a large, wicked problem, right? When we're thinking about these really large, complex, systemic challenges to take. I couldn't help but thinking that pretty much everything that we think about within this context is, you know, preceded by something is followed after by something and and we have a big spaghetti complexity to try and get through. And I thought that was, that's a it was brought to life for me in that conversation the systemic and complex nature of these types of changes, and how hard it is to to move things when everything's connected. So I don't have an answer to that, but it felt like a great example of a really large time well, and

I think it's a really interesting and I think that connects with a lot of the stuff we talk and actually, I think it's less I'm now at a place where I'm almost it's less surprising to me that everything is linked, and it's more, I think we have to create arbitrary boundaries in order to figure out which parts of the system we work on at different times. Otherwise, the problem becomes so interconnected in our society that it's almost, it's like a massive jumbled ball of wool that you cut you find the end, but there's no point pulling that end, because if you pull that end, you just tighten up all the knots in it. And I think, I think there's a, there's a question about how we demarcate the different areas arbitrarily, almost to allow ourselves some success in some spaces, and then start to untangle bits on the other side.

Yeah. I think that's fair. I think for me, there's another comment sort of to build on that, which is that when these things are big and wicked and complex, one of the things that we can all do is we can all look after our own small garden, if you will, and use our own behaviors and try and shape our little space. And that's okay. So if you're in an organization and believe that this is the direction we should be going, and you can role model things yourself. You can look after your small patch of a world. And if everybody looks after their small patch of a world, then perhaps the world will change eventually. So I think there's something about that, you know, doing what you can, exerting influence on the spaces that you can, and trying to shift things that way. Well, I think that's probably about it from us. So it's goodbye from me, until next