New parents in South Africa will from now on be able to share parental leave. South Africa is the first country in Africa to introduce leave that can be freely shared between parents. Until now, four months leave has been awarded to the mother and only 10 days to the partner. From now on, the parents can share the four months as they wish. In the rest of Africa, fathers either have less than three weeks earmarked parental leave, or none at all. The new leave rules follow a decision made by the High Court in the South African city of Johannesburg, which also ruled that adoptive parents are entitled to four months of shared parental leave. – It raises the threshold for parental leave in a good way, says Wessel van den Berg from the equality organization Equimondo to the British newspaper The Guardian. – I am happy that our legislation will be more in line with our values. In return, the new leave rules have been criticized for making the time after the birth more difficult for the woman. According to the international labor organization ILO, maternity leave should be a minimum of 4 weeks and is recommended to be at least 18 weeks long. South Africa thus meets these standards with neither the old nor the new rules. The court assumed that the existing leave rules were discriminatory both for men and for non-biological parents of the children. According to the World Economic Forum, South Africa has two years to implement the new rules. A more equal distribution of parental leave between parents has also been on the agenda in the EU. In this connection, the new rules in Denmark were implemented in August last year. This means, among other things, that there are now 13 weeks of leave for each parent, which they can freely share between themselves.
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Soon, parental leave may be shared equally in South Africa
