Better maternity leave could help universities retain women – study
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Loading... - Agnes Lehnert
- 22 Jan 2021
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Better maternity leave could boost British productivity by encouraging qualified women to stay in the workforce, according to researchers who found universities with the most generous maternity leave employed twice the number of women professors compared with those offering the least.
Vera Troeger, a professor of economics at Warwick University, said her research found that the universities with the best maternity leave policies were better able to retain qualified women who went on to become professors and receive higher pay.
But universities that offered much shorter periods of paid leave were more likely to see qualified women staff leave after having children, disrupting or even ending their careers, according to the figures going back to 2006 studied by Troeger and Mariaelisa Epifanio of Liverpool University.
Troeger said the findings could not only help universities crack the glass ceiling for women academics but also had huge implications for the British economy as a whole by accessing “untapped female talent”.
“Extended maternity provision might actually boost female productivity and pay for itself in the long run,” Troeger said. “And it could help the UK to close its productivity gap with Germany and the US. The more maternity provision you can offer allows women to more easily stay connected to the labour market, and so be more productive.”
The research – soon to be published as a working paper – also found substantial variations in maternity leave policies among British universities.
While Oxford University offers its full-time staff 26 additional weeks of leave on full pay, some well-known institutions such as Exeter and Nottingham universities offered just eight weeks.
Troeger said that many private employers offered better maternity leave policies than a number of universities, despite higher education’s reputation for being a more liberal employer.
“A lot of the private sector now understands that if you want to help keep talented female staff, this is one way to do it,” she said.
The research comes after official figures showed that only one in four professorial-level posts at British universities were filled by women last year. The data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency also showed that women were more likely to have lower-paid, short-term contracts.
The law in England allows for full-time employees generally to receive a statutory minimum of six weeks’ leave at 90% of their average weekly pay and the right to a further 33 weeks on £141 a week in most cases, which employers can supplement.
Epifanio and Troeger found that the generosity of paid maternity leave varied hugely and was not connected to a university’s income. Instead, research-intensive universities were more likely to offer better leave, while those with lower research ratings and more staff working in humanities were likely to offer less. Universities with low staff-student ratios were often more generous.
Universities that offered their own childcare provision were also found to have more women professors on staff.
Troeger said that research-intensive universities were more selective about the staff they hired and trained, and therefore made greater efforts to keep them. As a result, they had more qualified women able to compete for the most senior posts and avoid the so-called “leaking pipe” problem of losing talented women staff.
According to the research, seven institutions offered packages worth up to 26 weeks of additional maternity leave on higher pay, including Oxford, Southampton and Manchester universities, Birkbeck College in London and the Royal College of Art.
University College London, Cambridge and several other members of the “golden triangle” of universities, which receive the bulk of the UK’s research funding, offered up to 18 weeks’ leave to permanent staff.
But the patchy nature of maternity leave policies could be seen in the Scottish Agricultural College being among those offering 26 weeks’ paid leave while the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester offered none.
Several institutions had different packages depending on length of employment and tenure. In several cases, staff on short fixed-term contracts received little or no paid leave compared with other permanent staff at the same institution.
At Anglia Ruskin University, those employed on long or permanent contracts received six weeks’ additional paid leave while those on shorter contracts received none. Some 15 institutions, including Leeds Metropolitan and Bolton universities, offered no paid leave to some staff.
Troeger also said that the research found “no relationship between maternity/paternity leave provisions and career opportunities of male academics”.
