Paying new dads to take time off work is madness

That is the question facing Britain’s women’s rights movement over maternity leave.  The granting of nine months’ leave, soon to increase to a year, for new mothers was heralded as a breakthrough in the femini­sation of the workplace.

Feminists underlined their victory by passing a law forbid­ding employers from asking female job applicants whether

they intended to have children.

In their minds the “glass ceiling” had been shattered and all was right with the world. But it has not turned out like that.

The combination of expen­sive maternity entitlements and a statutory ban on em ployers fishing for information during interviews has  actually made it harder for women to get on in their careers.

Many employers in the private sector – that part of the economy which has to keep a lid on costs and aim to make a

profit – now file applications from women of child bearing age in the bin.

As Sir Alan Sugar bluntly put it: “You’re not allowed to ask so it’s easy: just don’t employ them.”

The logical answer to thequestion of what you should do with a duff idea is, of course, to abandon it. But state­sectorfeminism does not follow the rules of logic.

So Nicola Brewer, chief executive of the Equal­ities Commission and thus Britain’s high priestess of state feminism, wishes instead to  extend these counterproductive “concessions” to men. 

Give men access to  almost as much paren­tal leave as women and  employers will have less reason to favour male job applicants,  Dr Brewer is telling ministers.

With two weeks’ paid paternity leave already due next year, she wants a rise to 26 weeks of daddy­ baby bonding time.

Dr Brewer and her supporters argue that this will end the dis­ advantage now faced by female job applicants because bosses can’t possibly bin the Cvs of both genders. Well, actually they can. Indeed many have been doing just that recently.

As unemployment soars the question facing employers is not who should fill vacancies but which employees should be kept on and which made redun­dant.

Making the employment of men as big a gamble as the employment of women will  simply lead to fewer jobs all round.

Many companies will  relocate production to coun­ tries with less burdensome employment laws. Others will decide not to expand because the costs are too great.

Small and medium­sized businesses are already finding the maternity leave regime an unbearable burden. They   cannot afford to hire cover for absent employees, especially not in a recession, so a new mother’s colleagues have to take on her work while she is away.

That leads to lower  morale, higher workplace stress and a less productive working environment.

But Dr Brewer and her regi­ment of public­sector feminists are immune to this. Their wages and pensions are paid by

the private sector they spend their lives ordering around.

They are ideologically commit­ted to the false notion that Britain will not be fair until men and women are equally repre­sented in every part of society.

As Dr Brewer put it last year: “Let’s not ignore the fathers who face a work environment based around men as breadwin­ners and women as carers.

Maybe they would like a chance to share raising the children? Over the next few months the commission will be working to find solutions so that women and other groups, as well as men, are given the choice and opportunity to get into the posi­tions of power and influence that truly fulfil their potential.”

But the vast majority of fami­lies freely decide the woman will take on the bulk of child­rearing while the man focuses

on bread­winning.

They reach this decision mainly because the experience of motherhood is a far more profound one than many young women, schooled in post­Sixties feminist thought, expect.

Remember that old line about nobody’s last words being “I wish I’d spent more time at the office”? Well, new mothers tend to work that out a lot faster than new fathers.

They have carried a child for nine months and for many being with it is much more appealing than returning to the rat race. Yet very few men have what it takes to be a full­time child­rearer.

A frequent upshot of parenthood is  that a woman becomes less interested in the workplace and a man more interested.  So Dr Brewer’s social engi­ neering ambitions are bound to be thwarted.

Even if her recom­ mendations are accepted by ministers and extended parental leave becomes a right for  fathers, employers know that they will be much less likely to use it than mothers. Indeed, even Dr Brewer is recommend­ing paternity leave be granted only at a “low” pay rate, so the vast majority of dads will not be able to afford to take it.

It is almost beyond belief that the bossy­boots public sector is still churning out new regulatory duties and burdens for employers at a time when the productive sector of the British economy is engaged in a fight for its life.

Despite its protestations of being “new” Labour has  reverted to type. It is once more obsessed with the distribution of wealth and jobs and not interested in their creation.

Thus its feminist theoreticians draw up grand plans to bring about the eradication of differ­ence between the genders at the cost of general economic impoverishment.

They do not mind taking us to hell in a handcart so long as it is not drawn by a handmaid.