A Japanese city council will require male employees to take a total of six weeks of paid leave before their babies’ first birthdays and then explain what they learned in a bid to end perceptions that child care is only a woman’s job, officials said on Thursday.
No male municipal worker in Ota, an industrial city north of Tokyo, has ever taken leave after having a child, a personnel division official said.
”We are to take the measure to get men involved in raising children,” the official said, explaining there was ”a persistent view in society that women should raise children”.
The requirement will start on January 1 and several male employees have already shown readiness to take leave, during which they will be paid full salary, he said.
The men will take the leave a week at a time and will not be able to take the weeks off consecutively. They will have to submit a report to the city on child-rearing afterwards. There will be no punishment if the employees fail to take the leave.
Japanese law allows both women and men to take a full year off until their children turn one. But employees usually receive only part of their salaries, making time off difficult for men.
Only 0,4% of men with children aged under one took leave in 2003 at companies with 30 employees or more, compared with 73,1% of women in the same situation, according to Japan’s labour ministry.
Japan’s fertility rate last year stood at a post-war low of 1,29 children per woman as fewer young people choose to start families. – Sapa-AFP