More parental leave will only hurt women in gaining equality.

Increasing leave for parents sounds warm and fuzzy, but women may end up regretting it

Protests last year against Hollywood director Joe Wright for casting lily-white football heiress Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily in this fall’s Pan movie didn’t get very far. Someone circulated a petition online demanding he pick a Native American actress; it fizzled. Wright was unapologetic. “When people see the film,” he said, “they get it.” Show business is that rare sector where it’s still fine to disregard affirmativeaction codes and openly discriminate, casting by waist and cup sizes, blue-eyed-dreaminess, or the lack of baby bump. When Hilary Duff was dropped from a Bonnie and Clyde remake a few years ago after announcing she was pregnant, everyone in the industry got that, too.

Outside Hollywood, employers also still discriminate — just more covertly. Not unlike the producer who booted Duff, companies naturally favour candidates with better ratios of Problems Potentially Solved to Problems Potentially Created when they are hiring. If someone looks like he or she might cause several long periods of disruption to a business, that can’t go unnoticed. And since the Liberals were elected promising to stretch parental leave by another six months, female candidates could soon be going to interviews looking like they could cause employers much more potential disruption. That won’t do women any favours.

It’s no small deal to employers that Canada already requires companies to guarantee 12-months leave for a new parent. EI covers the pay, but companies must still fund benefits. Finding temporary replacements can be costly and strenuous, and there’s no certainty a new mom will eventually return, or for how long. And it’s almost exclusively a female thing: 83% of women take paid leave, according to a 2012 Statistics Canada study, but only 13% of fathers do (outside Quebec, which has a different model). Dads take an average of 2.4 weeks; moms take more than 40.

Who really believes that a recruiter working with already stretched resources doesn’t struggle against the unspoken urge to opt for the age-gender mix in an applicant that’s far less likely to cause a future staffing headache? A law firm survey last year of managers in the U.K. (where employers pay the 12-months leave) found that more than one-third admitted they’d rather hire a male than a female of childbearing age to spare them the leave hassles. Canada’s Liberals have promised 18 months.

Such policies are designed to please parents (who vote) not corporations (who don’t), and aren’t based on much more than that. Public health experts generally agree that a year is more than enough time for baby to breastfeed and bond. Longer benefits, meanwhile, can actually sabotage women — even women who have no interest in babies.

In 1999, Spain began requiring employers to let young parents work reduced hours; in the decade that followed, the likelihood of younger women being hired over men fell 7% and their likelihood of being laid off before a male increased 30%, according to a 2013 study by Germany’s Institute for the Study of Labor. A 2013 National Bureau of Economic Research review of Norway’s policies, which doubled leave between 1977 and 1992, concluded that the extra leave was “regressive” in that it “amounted to a pure leisure transfer… to middle and upper income families.” Some European countries now give families higher benefits when dads take more leave and moms less, which seems smarter than the Liberals’ plan since research consistently indicates that the longer a woman stays home, the more her career suffers.

Politicians merrily ordering up ever-longer stretches of parental leave may get credit for being feminist-and-family-friendly, but they’re making it harder for women to signal their reliability to employers — precisely the thing a company needs to have a sense of when hiring. At least in Hollywood, it’s plainly obvious when a woman is being discriminated against. In Canada, young, ambitious women can only guess how much unspoken damage the Liberals’ longer leave policies will do to their careers.

IF SOMEONE LOOKS LIKE HE OR SHE MIGHT CAUSE SEVERAL LONG PERIODS OF DISRUPTION TO A BUSINESS, THAT CAN’T GO UNNOTICED