Queensland’s Bid to Replace ‘Maternity Leave’ With ‘Birth-Related Leave’ Under Scrutiny
The Queensland government is facing mounting pushback for its attempt to remove the terms ‘maternity leave and ‘her’ and replace them with gender-neutral languages like ‘long birth-related leave’ and ‘the pregnant employee.’
The criticism comes over four months after Anastasia Palaczcuk introduced several amendments to the Labor government’s Industrial Relations Act 2016, which passed parliament on Friday.
The provisions aim to promote gender pay equity, strengthen protections for workers subject to sexual harassment and improve the entitlements under the Queensland Employment Standards, including parental and adoption leave.
In a controversial move, the bill also proposed to get rid of gendered expressions like ‘maternity’ and ‘maternity leave’ in a bid to avoid any implied gender division of parental care. For example, clause 11 proposed changing from intention to take maternity leave to ‘intention of pregnant employee to take birth-related leave.’ …