Paid maternity leave, in-house childcare and the ability to job share or work from home are the main concerns of workers spoken to by The Daily Telegraph.

Even bosses said they felt longer paid maternity leave would be more help to most of their workers.

“My workers get paternity leave in line with the award but not many take me up on it,” said David Khandan, CEO of a security company.

His brother Ben - a general manager of the same security company - said he felt resources would be better spent and families would benefit more by increasing the amount of paid maternity leave.

“It would be more benefit to the newborn for the mother to be at home so I’d rather see a greater focus on longer paid maternity leave than paternity leave,” he said.

Mother of two and part-time beauty industry worker Ruba Qutami said if the Government wanted to make workplaces family friendly they should make childcare more affordable.

“I’m on a pension rate [for childcare] but a big part of my income goes on it. Cheaper childcare would really help me - especially when everything else is so expensive.”

Inequality is alive and well - Five-point plan on discrimination

Paid maternity leave is a basic human right but gender inequality remains an everyday experience for both men and women in Australia, Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick said yesterday.

“A national scheme of paid leave for parents is no longer a question of whether, or how, but when,’’ Ms Broderick said in a speech at Sydney Girls High School.

“There is no question that legislated paid maternity leave is a basic human right.”

She was launching a report outlining her goals to achieve gender equality and announced a five-point plan to tackle the issue.

The Daily Telegraph yesterday reported that one of Ms Broderick’s concerns was the ability of fathers to access flexible work arrangements in order to spend more time with their families.

Ms Broderick said men should be treated the same as their female colleagues and not be penalised if they took advantage of family friendly work arrangements.

She said that on a national listening tour she heard women saying sex discrimination, in all its forms, was alive in Australian workplaces and sexual harassment was
“deeply embedded in our workplace, across industries and occupations”.

“I can report to you, without reservation, that in 2008, gender inequality remains an everyday lived experience for women and men in Australia,” she said.

Her plan for achieving gender equality focuses on increasing the number of women in leadership positions, achieving greater work/family balance, reducing sexual harassment and the gender gap in retirement savings and strengthening laws addressing sex discrimination and gender equality.

She said she believed it was time to review the powers of her role, adding that she would make a submission to a Senate inquiry into the Sex Discrimination Act.

Childcare subsidies don’t help families

By Sue Dunlevy

Increases in childcare subsidies have not had a direct effect on getting more women into the workplace, according to a study.

And government childcare subsidies have failed to rein in the cost of childcare and may in fact be responsible for driving up the price.

Research by the Centre for Independent Studies has found most of the increase in childcare use occurred in the 1980s before the big increases in childcare subsidies occurred.

And although government spending on childcare increased by 4000 per cent between 1974 and 2007, the workforce participation of women increased by only 50 per cent over that time.

“This makes it difficult to argue that spending on childcare provided the impetus for increased female employment,” researcher Jennifer Buckingham said.

She questioned the idea that increased government spending on childcare was needed to get more women into work and cast doubt on the claim that the government recoups more than it spends on childcare subsidies through increased tax take when women go back to work.

The Rudd Government’s decision to increase the childcare tax rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent of out of pocket costs will have a net cost to taxpayers of $327 million.

Mums’ decisions about whether to use childcare were often not driven by cost but concerns about the effects of childcare on their children, Ms Buckingham said.

“Having children stops many women from taking up paid work, but this can be voluntary.

“Many women prefer to care for their children at home while they are young,” she said.

The proportion of a family’s weekly income eaten away by childcare fees almost doubled for single parents between 1991 and 2004.

There were smaller increases in costs for families with two parents earning the average wage where costs rose from 2.8 to 3.9 per cent of earnings, but the cost to wealthy families actually fell, the study shows.