According to official data, the mainland's population will grow by 480,000 in 2021, and the birth rate will be less than 1%. At the same time, the number of people aged 60 and over has reached 267 million, accounting for 18.9% of the total population. Increasing the fertility rate and alleviating the aging crisis have become an urgent practical need of the mainland at present.
With the two sessions of the National People's Congress approaching in 2022, Jiang Shengnan, a deputy to the National People's Congress and a researcher at Wenzhou University, will bring a proposal on improving the provisions on maternity, paternity and parental leave. Recently, Nandu reporters interviewed Jiang Shengnan around this suggestion.
Jiang Shengnan, deputy to the National People's Congress and researcher of Wenzhou University
In her view, the current provisions on maternity and paternity leave focus mainly on increasing women's leave, which exacerbates the adverse impact of childbirth on women's employment. She suggested increasing men's paid paternity leave so that men could also devote themselves to housework, coexistence and childcare with their partners.
Workplace discrimination brought about by marriage and childbearing problems suppresses women's desire to have children
Nandu: According to the World Bank, the labor force participation rate of women on the mainland reached 60% in 2019. At the same time, the issue of marriage and childbearing is often a problem for working women. What do you think of this phenomenon?
Jiang Shengnan: The proportion of working women in the mainland is the highest in the world, and they have made great contributions to the economic take-off over the years. But we see that when some professional women's careers reach a higher position and face promotion, leaders may consider that they will have a second or third child, take a long vacation, and then give important occupations to others.
Let women withdraw from the workplace competition in order to give birth, is it possible that the family has invested in the education and cultivation of women for so many years, and finally only let them become reproductive tools? This is not reasonable. In the past, ordinary families' investment in women's education has gradually decreased, and our protection of women's rights and interests will flow back.
Nandu: There is a view that the current declining birth rate is because women of childbearing age do not have the will to have children, do you agree?
Jiang Shengnan: On the contrary, I think it is not that women of childbearing age do not have the desire to have children, but that their desire to have children is suppressed and cannot be supported and helped. If only women's maternity leave and parental leave are extended, they will encounter employment discrimination, and in turn they will choose to vote with their feet and choose not to have children.
In fact, my suggestions over the years are closely related to this matter, such as promoting statutory marriage examinations, opposing the cooling off period for divorce, improving the judicial interpretation of robbery and hiding children and refusing to carry out the crime, and lifting the 35-year-old age limit for civil servants in the past two years, all of which are to allow women to have children with peace of mind.
We can't blindly blame women for not giving birth to a new life, but also ask the society, the workplace, including female partners, are they ready for a new life?
It is recommended to increase male paid paternity leave and increase male childcare participation
Nandu: What considerations are being based on your proposal to increase paid paternity leave for men?
Jiang Shengnan: All localities are extending maternity leave for women of childbearing age, while male paternity leave is only ten days, or even less than 10 days. This seems to turn population growth into the responsibility of women independently, is the problem of fertility irrelevant to men? This is certainly not right, the child is a product of both parents.
In fact, men are also facing reproductive pressure, and the "35-year-old crisis" makes them dare not talk about marriage and have children. In addition, the short paternity leave also leads to the lack of time to take care of their wives and children. Society should also give men of childbearing age enough space to get married and have children, so that they have more time to devote themselves to housework, coexistence with their partners, and child-rearing.
I recommend increasing male paid paternity leave to 30-42 days to increase male childcare participation. This number of days is actually a reference to women's 42-day puerperium, which is the period when they need the care of their spouses very much.
If we want to promote the fertility rate, we must not only let the mother spend the pregnancy and childbirth well, but also cannot ignore the rights and responsibilities of the father for child-rearing. For the child's life or the entire reproductive chain, if the father is absent in the early stage of childbearing, it often means the loss of the follow-up link.
Nandu: In addition, what other suggestions do you have to improve maternity, paternity and parental leave?
Jiang Shengnan: I think it is necessary to formulate regulations on maternity-related holidays such as maternity leave, paternity leave, and parental leave at the national level. Taking into account the differences in economic and demographic conditions between provinces and regions, special areas may be given the right to increase the number of incentive holidays within a certain range.
Not only that, but according to the affordability of the social security fund, the nature and strength of the work of different enterprises and institutions, and the different demands of working women for childbirth, maternity leave can be divided into two parts: compulsory maternity leave and flexible maternity leave. For example, during the statutory 128-day maternity leave, wages are mainly paid by the social security fund. On this basis, enterprises and institutions can take flexible maternity leave as a benefit, decide on the number of flexible maternity leave days and whether to pay wages and salaries, and clearly write it into the internal system.
In addition, many regions have promulgated new parental leave regulations, but parental leave is mostly limited to the child before the age of 3, between 5 and 15 days. I believe that parental leave should be promoted nationwide as soon as possible and that parents are entitled to parental leave until the age of 6. The corresponding number of parental leave days for each child is 5 days for each parent, with a maximum of 15 days.
Written by: Nandu reporter Huang Liling