FAMILY LEAVE

Whether Men and Women Should Get Paid Family Leave When Caring For An Infant Or Other Family Member

Whether Men and Women Should Get Paid Family Leave When Caring For An Infant Or Other Family Member

Introduction

In 1993, the United States passed the Family and Medical Leave Act. This policy was designed to provide twelve weeks of unpaid parental leave to parents of newborns. Since then, there have been numerous studies on the effects and usage of this policy but none has been done on the effects in academia. This paper will examine the effects of this policy at The Ohio State University by analyzing probationary period lengths of tenured faculty before and after the policy was enacted. Instead of offering unpaid parental leave, Ohio State will extend the probationary period one year for the birth of a child. Thus, by looking at the lengths of probationary periods, it is possible to see if faculty utilized the extension and took longer than six years. The extension was made to help women who have children while trying to obtain tenure but to ensure gender equity, it is available to men as well. Therefore, this paper evaluates the differences of lengths and distributions between genders to ascertain the usage of the policy.

Family and Medical Leave Act

Effective February 5, 1993, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was enacted to grant family leave under certain circumstances. These circumstances include the birth or adoption of a new child, a spouse or child's sickness or the employee's sickness. If the employee meets the requirements, they are allowed up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave. For the case of a new child, both mothers and fathers are eligible to take the leave. Upon return, there must be the same job or one comparable to the one they left. There has been some research on the usage of this leave for new mothers and fathers and it has been shown that fathers rarely take advantage of this option. Since, in general, men get paid more than women and therefore their opportunity cost is greater, this makes sense. It is less costly to have the wife take the unpaid leave in this case.

However, the policy in academia is slightly different. Under normal conditions, an assistant professor can take six years to prove themselves worthy of tenure. With the birth of a child, a faculty member, male or female, can get a year extension to compensate for their time caring for the newborn. They can choose to exercise this option up to two times. Thus, they can take a maximum of eight years to obtain tenure. By looking at lengths for males and females, we can analyze the usage of the policy. By looking at lengths before the policy and after the policy, we can determine any changes that occurred.

In search of gender equity, family leave policies with regard to the tenure clock are typically gender neutral, offering the same benefit to males and ...