Massachusetts' Strict Maternity Leave Ruling

This week, the Supreme Court of Massachusetts ruled that a woman could be fired for taking more than eight weeks unpaid maternity leave. Eight weeks is the minimum in Massachusetts at companies with more than six people, while companies with over 50 are beholden to the federal 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act which established a minimum of 12 weeks unpaid leave. As Forbes pointed out last Spring, the FMLA doesn't quite do the trick; by exempting companies with under 50 employees, the law lets over 50% of American companies off the hook.

One woman who fell through the large cracks in FMLA is Sandy Stephens, a housekeeper whose employer promised her 12 weeks leave after a cesarean section, only to discover that, upon taking her leave, she was fired. The ruling of the Massachusetts court against Stephens is unfortunate, but what really ails women and our nation's astonishingly poor treatment of mothers is not the courts, but the lack of protective laws and programs in place to support women. Courts can't create those laws.

Here's a little context: in Bosnia and Herzegovinia, women receive a full year of leave at their full salary; in the U.K., women receive a year's leave at 90%; the United States is tied with Zambia and Swaziland with 12 weeks unpaid leave. Women in the U.S. suffer professional and economic hardships women in all other developed countries no longer face. And for all those at companies with less than 50 employees, well their jobs should be protected too. We think of this in terms of a choice between the health of small businesses, struggling to get by, and the health of mothers. We think that business have to supply everything, which certainly puts an extra burden on small businesses, so the solution is for government to help out.

Lastly, it's important to point out that, while maternity leave is paramount, paternity leave is also crucial from a women's rights perspective. Even if women get all the leave they want, their careers will suffer because women who take time off won't be taken as seriously as the men in their office who keep on working as their families expand. Young women in particular are stigmatized professionally by the expectation that they will quit or put their career on hold to have children. The best way to ensure that women do not have to choose between their family and their careers is to actually split parenting responsibilities, not just on nights and weekends, but when it comes to taking a little break from the office.

Maternity leave is the more pressing concern, especially because it protects the careers and livelihoods of single mothers. The next step is to encourage fathers to take some of that time off too, so that women are not only allowed to take care of their children, but they are not be punished for it professionally.

Photo credit: Kevin Dooly