Thanks to this article from Fast Company, a little ray of hope has broken through my internal clouds today. It will probably last for a full five-ish minutes or so, but still. It's a start.
Because let's be real. American women get the shaft in the workplace. It's science. Just look here, here and here. And these are just a few in a slew of articles on this depressing working mom topic (she types from her work desk).
I'm choosing to ignore the fact that when the working men raise a stink, they get heard, like immediately. And rewarded:
JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay $5 million to hundreds of men who claimed they weren’t given the same paid leave as women when they became parents.
Instead, I'll focus on the upside:
As more companies adopt gender-neutral policies, society will see a net benefit for both men and women: Experts believe that more men taking parental leave will help even the playing field and close the gender pay gap.
But the question is, do we believe the experts? It depends. Are they men? Just kidding. Ish. I really, really want to believe them. Because if we go so far as to give men and women equal parental leave time across the board, then maybe we can move towards a longer and more humane paid leave time. (Need I point out here that the U.S. is one in just a handful of countries that doesn't mandate maternity leave? Yeah. We're right up there with 4 other countries you've probably never heard of: Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland. Swaziland for fuck's sake.)
Not to mention the fact that longer paternity leave is, indeed, better for everyone in the family. Our country has been operating far too long on the notion that dads just plant the seed and then come back to water the plant every once in a while, when it looks dry. (I thought you'd like that metaphor.)
So I'm going to chalk this one up in the "win" column. Because baby steps. Baby steps for the people with the babies. Seems only fitting.
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