Rantz: Paid maternity leave is actually bad for women

If the talking points and political campaigns are to be believed, paid maternity leave (whether mandated by the government or offered voluntarily by businesses) is decidedly bad for women.

There’s no doubt that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done a lot of good in this world; they’ve helped work with some of the world’s poorest people, getting them out of poverty and offering them access to life-saving resources.

But on Friday of last week, they apparently have shown their disdain for American women! They decided to join a growing number of businesses offering paid time off for new parents to spend with their child (including newly adopted children). In fact, they’re offering 52 paid weeks off for this purpose!

But, as a result, women will suffer.

Well, they won’t actually suffer, but the results of this will be used to both simultaneously celebrate how pro-woman this policy is, while the stats this creates will be used to show a widening gender wage gap. As it turns out, maternity leave is a huge reason stats suggest men and women are being paid differently in America.

What happens when you, as a new mom, leave the workforce for an entire year? Lost revenue potential. As you’re out of the workforce, your male counterpart is in the office, working long hours and, naturally, advancing at a faster rate. So a bonus or advancement that would normally take you both one year to earn, will take the new mom two years because she’s starting a year behind.

On paper, if you compare the new mom to the male counterpart in the same position, it will be as if the female worker is being paid less than the male one. While technically true, that one stat lacks important context. The lack of basic context is the basis for much of the gender wage gap arguments being made to wage a war against one’s perceived political opponents.

None of this is to say maternity leave is bad. I think it’s a great perk that every company should offer, if they can afford it. Not only does it make for a better, more invested worker, but it makes for a stronger family. Nor should any of this analysis be construed as indicating sexism (institutional and otherwise) doesn’t exist; it certainly does and is responsible, certainly on the micro level, to explain away why some women make less than some men in equal roles with equal experience. And, we should note, out of fairness, this analysis is based on the assumption that men won’t suddenly change their parental leave habits (men tend not to take much time off for the birth of their kid).

But you should understand how this perk will work its way into the stats on gender wage gap and how it will be unfairly positioned to fight against the perceived gender wage gap. When the gap widens as a result of this perk, do you think the political activists on this issue will give you the context, or do you think they’ll use it to push the line that sexism is thriving in the workforce?