Sir, – Though new additions to parental leave by Government are welcome, they remain trivial. Ireland continues to be an outlier among developed nations in offering vastly different parental leave on the basis of sex.
Ireland’s parental leave offering not only propagates the dusty model of mothers providing 95 per cent of newborn care while men work, it also disincentivises employers from hiring or promoting women, on the safe assumption that equally qualified men will take negligible parental leave.
Data indicates higher hospital readmission rates among birthing women with male partners who do not take parental leave. Even here in the United States – where parental leave is shamefully short – men have equal access to parental leave, as do both parents in same-sex couples.
The Irish Government cannot claim to be committed to gender equity in health or in the workplace until it truly supports gender equity in the home. – Yours, etc,
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DR RONAN SUGRUE,
Obstetrician and gynaecologist,
Duke University School of Medicine,
North Carolina.
