THE FACTS

Most people are familiar with the Family and Medical Leave Act which mandates 12 weeks time off work–for some employees and from some employers–but it is not paid. There are a lot of ifs, ands, and buts about this law, but for the sake of your time, I’ll leave it at that.

Moving on... New York just took a huge step towards closing the infamous wage gap by mandating paid family leave. Paid family leave. Last Thursday, a budget deal was signed increasing NYC’s minimum wage to $15 by 2018 and paid family leave starting in 2018 and fully in effect by 2021.

Just for some background information, California (6 weeks), New Jersey (6 weeks), and Rhode Island (4 weeks) are the only other states with paid maternity and paternity leave. Swaziland, Lesotho, Papua New Guinea, and the USA are the only nations without paid family leave (with the USA being the only industrialized nation).

When the benefits are fully implemented in 2021, new mothers and fathers will be able to take 12 weeks off for the birth, adoption, and fostering of a child while being paid 67% of their weekly salaries. With all the horrible things happening in the news every day, what a breath of fresh air.

WHAT TO THINK

Since approximately 60% of all women in the United States participate in the labor force, it was obvious that not offering paid maternity leave contributed to the wage gap. But this is not at all a reason to justify that gap. When someone’s thought process is, “Yeah, sure, men get paid more annually than women because women take time off to give birth,” I cringe a little. That should make people feel more uncomfortable, not more confident in the numbers.

It’s as if you throw a number at someone and all of a sudden everything makes sense. Statistics all have implications.

Yes, most non-developed countries have better paid family leave benefits than the United States, but in many of those countries, the employment participation among women is much lower. Still, in Bangladesh, paid family leave lasts 16 weeks and the employment rate among women is almost equal to that of the United States. If you ask yourself why this may be, a quick Google search reminds you that Bangladesh had a woman as head of state for a longer period than any other country in the entire world.

WHAT TO DO

While this is certainly a step in the right direction, it really is just a step. As a woman of color, I am so grateful that I live in the state of New York right now, but the rest of our nation has so much work to do in terms of family leave, and my state joins the other 49 states in effort to close the overall gender wage gap.

Aside from obviously exercising your right to vote, I always think the best thing to do in terms of gender equality is to keep talking about it and keep reading about it. You have to be as informed as possible to be able to speak on why this is even a problem; otherwise you just sound like another person who saw one infographic and freaked out.

The budget deal that was signed last Thursday took many of my fellow New Yorkers for a pleasant surprise. But just as we shouldn’t take statistics for face value, we also shouldn’t take laws for fact. Making parents think twice about building their families and letting women get paid less than men is just as absurd as racial segregation.