Americans in favor of paid leave are often quick to point out that the United States is one of only two countries that do not have it. That only the U.S. and Papua New Guinea have decided not to make this particular investment in our labor force.
Their detractors will be happy to know that this is actually untrue. The U.S. and Papua New Guinea are not the only two countries in the world without paid parental leave, a policy that keeps women in the workforce and adds millions, if not billions (if not trillions), to countries’ national gross domestic product. Those who say we shouldn’t implement paid leave need not be cowed by the argument that the U.S. is one of only two countries in the world without paid leave! It’s not just the U.S. and Papua New Guinea!
What’s that? Which others? Don’t fret. The U.S., a country believed to be the very best in the world by roughly one-third of its citizens, and Papua New Guinea are joined by none other than Suriname and Tonga.
“That’s not generally four nations you put together,” quipped Anne-Marie Slaughter, New America’s president and CEO, introducing a recent event on paid leave (Tonga is actuallyone of five small Pacific Island states without paid leave). More specifically, after a presentation by Tazeen Hasan of the World Bank Group, which produced the report on how 173 of the world’s economies do and don’t enfranchise women, the event considered how, should Americans ever decide to leave the aforementioned ranks (sorry, Suriname; later, Tonga), we could learn from the rest of the world how to put in place a paid leave policy appropriate for the world’s largest economy in the 21st century.
[For more of this story, written by Emily Tamkin, go to https://psmag.com/paid-leave-a...7b787f13c#.ijgzuog7b]
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