•In 2013, Vietnam extended the required maternity leave from 4 months to 6 months.•We use difference-in-differences and triple-differences to evaluate the effects of this maternity leave extension on ...women’s labor market outcomes.•The maternity leave extension encouraged women to move from agricultural household work into private formal employment.•Women primarily move into the manufacturing industry and middle-skilled occupations such as machine operators and clerks.
Despite a sizable literature on the labor market effects of maternity leave regulation on women in developed countries, how these policies affect women’s work in developing countries with a large informal sector remains poorly understood. This study examines how extending the maternity leave requirement affects women’s decision to work in the informal or formal sector in Vietnam. We use a difference-in-differences approach to evaluate the 2012 Amendments to the Vietnam Labor Law, which imposes a longer maternity leave requirement than before. We find that the law increases formal employment and decreases unpaid work among women. This is driven by women switching from agricultural household work to employment in the private formal sector, especially in the manufacturing industry and among the middle-skilled occupations such as plant and machine workers, craft and related workers, as well as clerks.
How do Family and Medical Leave Act rights operate in practice in the courts and in the workplace? This empirical study examines how institutions and social practices transform the meaning of these ...rights to recreate inequality. Workplace rules and norms built around the family wage ideal, the assumption that disability and work are mutually exclusive, and management's historical control over time all constrain opportunities for social change. Yet workers can also mobilize rights as a cultural discourse to change the social meaning of family and medical leave. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from social constructivism and new institutionalism, this study explains how institutions transform rights to recreate systems of power and inequality but at the same time also provide opportunities for law to change social structure. It provides a fresh look at the perennial debate about law and social change by examining how institutions shape the process of rights mobilization.
•We investigate the relationship between the enactment of paid maternity leave laws (PML) and corporate cash holdings.•We employ a staggered Difference-in-Differences approach.•We find that the ...enactment of paid maternity leave laws reduces cash holdings by increasing employee productivity.•The reduction in corporate cash holdings is more pronounced among labor-intensive industries.
This study examines whether paid maternity leave laws affect corporate cash holdings. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find the staggered introduction of these laws significantly reduce firm cash reserves, especially in labor-intensive industries. Further analysis indicates that increased employee productivity post-adoption associates with declining cash holdings, representing a channel linking these laws to precautionary savings motives.
Parental leave is linked to health benefits for both child and parent. It is unclear whether surgeons at academic centers have access to paid parental leave. The aim of this study was to determine ...parental leave policies at the top academic medical centers in the United States to identify trends among institutions.
The top academic medical centers were identified (US News & World Report 2016). Institutional websites were reviewed, or human resource departments were contacted to determine parental leave policies. “Paid leave” was defined as leave without the mandated use of personal time off. Institutions were categorized based on geographical region, funding, and ranking to determine trends regarding availability and duration of paid parental leave.
Among the top 91 ranked medical schools, 48 (53%) offer paid parental leave. Availability of a paid leave policy differed based on private versus public institutions (70% versus 38%, P < 0.01) and on medical center ranking (top third = 77%; middle third = 53%; and bottom third = 29%; P < 0.01) but not based on region (P = 0.06). Private institutions were more likely to offer longer paid leaves (>6 wk) than public institutions (67% versus 33%; P = 0.02). No difference in paid leave duration was noted based on region (P = 0.60) or rank (P = 0.81).
Approximately, 50% of top academic medical centers offer paid parental leave. Private institutions are more likely to offer paid leave and leave of longer duration. There is considerable variability in access to paid parenteral leave for academic surgeons.
The availability of paid parental leave is an important factor for retention and wellness. The experiences of head and neck surgeons with parental leave have never been reported.
A survey was ...electronically distributed to head and neck subspecialty surgeons in the United States. Responses were collected and analyzed.
Male surgeons had more children and took significantly less parental leave than women. Thirty percent of respondents reported that parental leave negatively impacted compensation, and 14% reported a delay in promotion due to leave, which impacted women more than men. The vast majority reported they are happy or neutral about covering those on leave. Most respondents utilized paid childcare, and approximately one quarter of respondents spending 11%-20% of their income on childcare.
This study illuminates the current disparities regarding parental leave-taking within the subspecialty of head and neck surgery in the United States. Women surgeons are more likely to be impacted professionally and financially.
This paper evaluates the impacts of unpaid maternity leave provisions of the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) on children's birth and infant health outcomes in the United States. My ...identification strategy uses variation in pre-FMLA maternity leave policies across states and variation in which firms are covered by FMLA provisions. Using Vital Statistics data and difference-in-difference-in-difference methodology, I find that maternity leave led to small increases in birth weight, decreases in the likelihood of a premature birth, and substantial decreases in infant mortality for children of college-educated and married mothers, who were most able to take advantage of unpaid leave. My results are robust to the inclusion of numerous controls for maternal, child, and county characteristics, state, year, and month fixed effects, and state-year interactions, as well as across several different specifications.
Working mothers often find themselves in a difficult situation when trying to balance work and family responsibilities and to manage expectations about their work and parental effectiveness. ...Family-friendly policies such as maternity leave have been introduced to address this issue. But how are women who then make the decision to go or not go on maternity leave evaluated? We presented 296 employed participants with information about a woman who made the decision to take maternity leave or not, or about a control target for whom this decision was not relevant, and asked them to evaluate her both in the work and the family domain. We found that both decisions had negative consequences, albeit in different domains. While the woman taking maternity leave was evaluated more negatively in the work domain, the woman deciding against maternity leave was evaluated more negatively in the family domain. These evaluations were mediated by perceptions of work/family commitment priorities. We conclude that while it is important to introduce policies that enable parents to reconcile family and work demands, decisions about whether to take advantage of these policies can have unintended consequences – consequences that can complicate women's efforts to balance work and childcare responsibilities.
•We investigate how women's decisions regarding maternity leave affects their evaluation.•Women who choose to take maternity leave are seen as less competent at work and less worthy of organizational rewards.•Women who choose not to take maternity leave are seen as worse parents and less desirable partners.•Perceptions of whether women prioritize family or work play an important role in these processes.
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