INTRODUCTION
Research 1 conducted on behalf of the Government Equalities Office (GEO) has prompted the GEO to conclude that significant inequalities persist in the way that childcare responsibilities are divided up and shared, with women in the UK doing on average about twice as much childcare as men. Whilst there have been no official statistics released by the government on how many parents have taken Shared Parental Leave (SPL), a freedom of information request by law firm EMW showed that just 9,200 parents shared their leave in 2017-18, only 500 more than the year before. The GEO research found that, whilst financial factors (such as childcare costs and the parents’ relative income) played a role in determining child care responsibilities, many of the parents still adopted a model where the mother stayed at home or worked part-time while the father worked full-time.
With SPL available to both parents, regardless of gender, this research is exploring whether this apparent gender bias to parental leave is also evident in other types of statutory leave and pay.
1. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/705898/Return_to_work-parental_decision_making.pdf
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CIPP | CRONER | PORTFOLIO PAYROLL
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