DADDY COOL
Finland set to offer dads seven months’ paid paternity leave – the same as mums – under female Prime Minister’s plans
FINLAND'S female-led government has announced plans to give dads the same fully-paid parental leave as their partners.
Paternity leave for new fathers is set to match the nearly seven months that new mums get, allowing dads to bond with their child and support their new families during the exhausting first few months.
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The policy gives parents 164 days leave each to take whenever they want, but they are allowed to transfer 69 days of their quota. Single parents get the full combined 328 days.
Because the parents don't have to take their leaves at the same time, then a family can maintain its income levels for 14 months, up from the current 11.5 months.
Pregnant women are also entitled to a month of additional leave before their due date.
By contrast, dads in the UK get a very poor deal, with only two working weeks max that has to be taken in one go, often just on statutory pay of £148.68, or 90% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower. Dads also only get time off to attend two antenatal or adoption appointments, providing they qualify.
UK parents can choose to share up to 50 weeks of parental leave, but figures released last year showed that just 1% of couples did so, with experts blaming the low statutory pay rate for this.
Finland's incredibly progressive centre-left government led by new PM Sanna Marin, 34, says this "radical reform" is intended to promote equality and boost birth rates.
Health minister Aino-Kaisa Pekonen said: "This will improve equality between parents and make the lives of diverse families easier."
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Pekonen said a more equal distribution of domestic roles has been shown to reduce the risk of divorce.
She added: "In the long term it also improves equality in working life and in wages by directing fathers to use a larger proportion of parental leaves than before."
Marin ran on putting gender equality at the forefront of her government's policy making, calling on states and companies to do more to ensure women were treated fairly.
Finland also wants to boost its birth rate after the number of newborns fell by around a fifth between 2010 and 2018.
Just 47,577 babies were born in 2018 in a country of around 5.5million people.
The health minister said countries such as Sweden and Iceland had seen increases in their birth rates after offering more leave for fathers.
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Finland's coalition of five parties, all led by women of whom four are younger than 35, took office in December. Twelve of the 19 members of the Cabinet are female.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Marin said that gender equality "doesn't happen by itself".
A previous centre-right Finnish government attempted to reform parental leave in 2018 but eventually rejected the idea as too costly.
Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Estonia and Portugal were praised in a Unicef report last year for offering the best family-friendly policies.
Swedes get 240 days combined parental leave under the most generous system in the world.
It ranked the UK, Ireland, Greece, Cyprus and Switzerland as the lowest of 31 "rich countries".
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