These include:. Maternity Allowance Act , Commonwealth of Australia, Social Security payments for people caring for children, — a chronology — on the Parliament of Australia website. The National Museum of Australia acknowledges First Australians and recognises their continuous connection to country, community and culture.
Defining Moments Maternity allowance introduced. Prime Minister Andrew Fisher. Opposition to the allowance Despite being forward-thinking in a number of ways, Australian society was committed to some traditional ideals, especially concerning women.
A progressive act The introduction of a maternity allowance recognised the need for government intervention to improve the health of women and children. These include: government-funded parental leave laws that make it illegal to discriminate against those taking leave to have children financial support for low-income families subsidised healthcare under Medicare childcare rebates school assistance programs. Curriculum subjects. Year levels. Explore Defining Moments.
Franchise Act. The pill. Age and invalid pensions. Unemployment insurance. The actual period of protection varies considerably. In China, Haiti and Romania, the period of protection corresponds to just the nursing period, which is not further defined.
Cash and Medical Benefits: The situation of workers who become pregnant shortly after beginning a new job is often precarious. Qualifying periods of 3 to 12 months of employment are frequently found in national laws and collective agreements with regard to access to benefits. Minimum contribution levels may be required to qualify for social security payments.
Part-time and temporary workers may have difficulty meeting eligibility requirements. In fact, a report to the US Congress on family and medical leave policies Note 2 found that per cent of the women eligible for leave who did not take it said that they could not afford to.
The report finds that working women have made striking progress in receiving maternity leave paid through social security since the first ILO maternity convention of , when only nine countries provided this benefit. The number rose to 40 by , and to more than today. In other countries, employers are required to pay all or part of the benefits. In many countries, the number of women entitled to maternity protection has increased mainly because of the extension of social security plans to women who were not previously covered, such as agricultural and domestic workers and the self-employed.
In the Bahamas, Costa Rica, Finland, Philippines, Portugal, Slovakia and Tunisia, for example, self-employed women are protected under the same qualifying conditions, at the same level of benefits and payment as employed women.
Belgium, France, Gabon, Luxembourg and Spain have set up special systems to protect self-employed women during maternity. While paid maternity leave has become standard in most industrialized countries, progress has not been uniform. In Eastern European countries, previously extensive maternity benefits, in particular cash benefits, have been cut back due to economic restructuring. Where large numbers of women work in the informal sector, legislation affords little protection.
In Colombia, 52 per cent of working women are employed in the informal sector, in Peru, 48 per cent, and Poland, 10 per cent.
In countries where social security systems are still weak, coverage is quite limited. Health Protection for Mother and Child : The ILO says that special workplace protection is required for working women because pregnancy, childbirth and the postnatal period are three phases in a woman's reproductive life in which special health risks exist. Such measures seek to minimize fatigue, reduce physical and mental stress and protect women against dangerous and unhealthy work.
Three major trends have marked changes in law and practice concerning the occupational safety and health of pregnant women and nursing mothers since , the report finds.
There has been a clear evolution away from generalized employment prohibitions for women towards more targeted protection for groups at risk, such as women before and after childbirth. Another trend, closely related to the first, has been the move toward protective measures better adapted to the needs and personal preferences of individual workers at different periods in their working life, rather than imposing involuntary restrictions for wide categories of workers, such as women of child-bearing age.
There has also been a growing awareness of the impact of the working environment on reproductive health and of the negative outcomes to pregnancy associated with both maternal and paternal exposure to hazardous substances, agents and processes. Beyond Childbirth : The report also analyses how countries are adapting to the needs of working families with legislation for parental, paternity and adoption leave.
Maternity leave and pay were originally designed to protect the health of mothers and children by providing adequate medical and nursing care in childbirth, to lessen the financial burden of childbearing and ensure a reasonable period free from excessive labour.
They vary from systems which consist primarily of paid time off work to those which include medical, nursing and in some cases, help with domestic labour. It included a universal maternal health benefit and a one off maternity grant of 30 shillings for insured women. The universal maternal benefit brought maternity rights onto the political agenda, but the early efforts centred on maternal and child health.
The number of nursery schools in the UK grew phenomenally during WWII - from 14 in to 1, in to help women to juggle work and childcare. But these provisions were temporary, and the concept of formal maternity leave remained firmly off the agenda.
Many women were routinely sacked for becoming pregnant till the late s. During the s, the provision of maternity leave had been introduced in many European countries.
In , Sweden introduced cross-gender parental leave available to both parents into law. The UK introduced its first maternity leave legislation through the Employment Protection Act , which was extended through further legislation, such as The Employment Act However, for the first 15 years, only about half of working women were eligible for it because of long qualifying periods of employment.
In , coverage was extended to all working women, in order to bring Britain into compliance with a European Commission directive on this issue. In , male employees received paid statutory paternity leave for the first time, an entitlement that was extended in January
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