Go for a stroll and take a listen to my 20-minute conversation with Jen Henderson, Founder and CEO of leave management company, Tilt. As a scholar, I point out lots of problems. Jen uses her business to provide a solution to one of these problems: how leave shows up unevenly across corporate America. Whether or not a worker has access to leave can affect their childbearing decisions. Businesses might struggle to retain workers if leave is too stingy. In short, leave matters for fertility trends, for the future of work, and for our aging population.
It’s well known that there’s no right to paid parental leave in the US, unlike in many other countries, but the immediate post-partum period is far from the only time US workers need to step away to care for loved ones throughout their working-life cycle. Some Americans are sandwiched by the need to care for their aging parents and their children; even the childfree may need personal leave. Lack of federal guidance means that employers are open to negotiating their own rules—that’s both good and bad, depending on the employer. I chatted with Jennifer Henderson, founder and CEO of Tilt, a company that helps both employers and employees manage and streamline leave.
Our conversation applies to all kinds of leave and all kinds of people (not just women and not just mothers), but given my interest in fertility I couldn’t help but ask some questions about women’s experiences. A few facts to consider for context:
About 71% of US families with children under age 18 had a working mother in 2021.
Both mothers and fathers are stressed trying to deal with work and family lives, but mothers face more of a penalty in career advancement than do fathers, who may actually benefit.
Women’s wages take a penalty from intense caregiving (~5%), while men’s intense caregiving brings no penalty. Some researchers have found fathers actually get a pay bump.
About 58% of US women are in the workforce today, compared to 62% of men.
Jen and I talk about labor and employment law language on gender, lessons the US can learn from other countries, what the best businesses are doing, differences between white- and blue-collar environments, and how to normalize leave in America’s work culture. I welcome comments about your leave experience, what you’ve seen in other countries, more studies on this, etc.
The Japanese mob, the yakuza, can’t find young recruits among Japan’s aging population. I feel like there was a missed opportunity to title the article From Hardball to Softball.
How can we even the playing field when it comes to paid leave?