Maternity Leave in France: What Is the Motivation?

In recent weeks there has been considerable media attention surrounding the French government and its cabinet members, with one of the latest spotlights shining on Rachida Dati (see right), the justice minister of France under President Nicolas Sarkozy. Dati, 43, is France’s first cabinet member of North African origin, and has been a star of the French press for some time now, initially making waves with the announcement of her unmarried pregnancy, a topic which created further commotion when Miss Dati declined to reveal the identity of the baby’s father. The most recent public scrutiny of the minister resulted from her decision to return to work just five days after giving birth to a baby girl, sparking heated discussions around the globe on the topic of maternity leave in France.

The French maternity leave system is widely acclaimed, particularly as a result of its seeming commitment to uphold and support mothers’ rights after giving birth. While certainly there are drawbacks to having policy as socially progressive as that of France, with cost being the main weakness, in general what the government offers pregnant women seems ideal: working mothers who are expecting a child are entitled to sixteen weeks total of paid leave, six weeks before the estimated delivery date and an additional ten weeks after the birth of the child, with varying stipulations for multiple births and for families with dependent children. There are also laws in place to ensure job protection, allowing mothers to return to their same positions and salaries after their leave comes to an end. And the benefits do not rest uniquely with mothers; a law was recently created which provides working fathers the opportunity to take up to two weeks of paid time off, regardless of their employment contract, within the first four months of a child’s birth. With maternity and paternity leave policies such as these, the temptation for working couples to start families seems difficult to resist. But as previously indicated, allocating parents the aforementioned benefits is not without its expenses, and it was noted that in 2006 France spent fifteen percent of its annual budget towards family and child services. So what, in effect, is driving the state to offer such generous compensations to expecting parents?

National Public Radio (NPR) recently aired a program about the controversy Rachida Dati’s fleeting maternity leave caused in France, highlighting the outrage from feminists in the country who perceive her refusal to take the full sixteen weeks of leave to which she is entitled as a move that “could be used to undermine hard-won and generous maternity rights.” The fury resulting from this situation brings to light the question as to whether or not the rationale behind France's maternity leave is directly related to the women’s rights movement. Undeniably, the current French policy demonstrates a commitment to mothers’ rights while simultaneously supporting the continued existence of women in the workplace, a notion that maintains the feminist goal of securing rights and opportunities for women that are equal to those of men. The debate over Dati’s actions and if she is indeed a traitor to her sex or Wonder Woman is, in this inquiry, a moot point; the curious angle this discussion brings up is if women’s rights were a key, motivating factor behind the French maternity leave laws. A very likely possibility is that women’s rights had little to do with the initial reasons for creating such a system in France, and instead the real goal was to promote a higher national birth rate. In recent years especially, birth rates in European countries have lowered steadily, causing the working-age population to shrink and creating a worrisome trend for heads of state in the European Union. Although the threat of a European extinction seems extremely dubious, the cause for worry remains financially driven, and as was stated in a BBC News article “demographic decline causes anxiety because it is thought to go hand in hand with economic decline” as “with fewer, younger workers to pay the health and pension bills of an elderly population, states face an unprecedented fiscal burden.” But while in general birth and fertility rates in Europe are consistently decreasing, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP), the birth rate in France has continued to climb in such a manner that the country is now holding the position of “Europe’s fertility champion.” This emergence as the number one baby-producing European country is a development that many believe has to do with the incentives the government offers to those who have children.

In addition to its benefits in regards to maternity and paternity leave, France also affords universal, full-time preschool starting at age three, stipends for in-home nannies, subsidized daycare before age three, monthly childcare allowances, and tax and transportation breaks for families with children. With enticements such as these, it is easy to understand how the state has been successful with its pro-natal policies while concurrently encouraging women to resume working, a vital step in maintaining the financial livelihood of a country. As the global economy takes a turn for the worse, however, and as President Sarkozy (see left) looks to cut costs à la américaine, it is questionable as to how much longer France will be able to sustain such programs. To be sure, with an annual cost of $102 million dollars and the president’s urging for a shorter maternity leave, the system will most likely be subject to reforms in the near future.