Editorial: Hard to see point of parent benefit

Women are now vital to the workforce. The entire economy of this country and many others is now geared to the paid work of women as well as men. The national living standard is set by double income households and there is a sizeable service industry to do housework for working couples.

But while the economy is geared to the work of women, the organisation of employment has some way to go. Two instances of dismissal for pregnancy have come to light in the past week. They are an egregious but timely reminder that there is some work to be done.

It is hard to believe, as the Human Rights Commissioner has said, that any employer would discriminate against pregnant women, let alone consider it grounds for dismissal. Yet the discrimination, he says, is not uncommon. It has been the subject of 44 inquiries to the commission since last August.

They must be among the easiest to answer. Women have a right to become pregnant, and to continue working in the condition for as long as they wish and are able. The also have a right in law to take up to a year off work, without pay, after the birth and to return to the same job or something similar. Now the Government proposes to award them the first six weeks of their leave on pay.

It is hard to see the point of a few weeks paid parental leave. It is a tiny fraction of the costs a child will present to the woman or the couple. If the provision of six weeks' income encourages anybody to have a child, as proponents of paid parental leave suggest, the benefit could do great harm. Fortunately, women are most unlikely to plan a pregnancy on such a slender financial margin. It is hard to see the point of the benefit except as a foot in the door for something much bigger.

In a world made ideal for working women, there would be paid leave from the final weeks of pregnancy until the baby could enter day care, which would be subsidised far more generously than it is now. Ideally, from a working woman's point of view, childcare would be provided by her employer - on the premises or nearby. She would be given time to attend to the child, days off when the child was ill and more flexible working hours to fit in with the needs of a growing family.

Practicality is going to fall short of the ideal. There is a limit to the costs that can be imposed on employers or taxpayers before business starts to suffer and everybody is worse off. That prospect is much less likely if improvements are negotiated between employers and women on their staff rather than imposed from outside.

Quite a number of employers have negotiated paid parental leave in salary packages for women. The Government's clumsy intervention will put another cost on those without such provisions and nullify the value of the benefit for those who have it now. They will be looking for some compensatory improvement in their package. So costs will rise for all, and national competitiveness takes another little blow. They all add up.

The incremental decline would gather pace rapidly if taxpayers were to start rewarding women for work that is now unpaid. That might not be the purpose of persistent studies of women's unpaid work, but it is hard to see any other point to the research. It is highly dubious research in any case; men probably do unpaid tasks that Ministry of Women's Affairs would not contemplate.

But the fallacy behind the exercise is that payment is the only measure of value. Paid work is a commodity sold to somebody who is prepared to pay for it. Unpaid work is an investment in yourself, your home and family or your club, as the case may be. The rewards are quite different.

The conditions of paid work need to be made more suited to women with families, without adding too much to the costs and restrictions employers already carry. That is the task ahead.