On The Perfection Of Maternity Leave

Fertility behaviour is necesary for personal development, national developmentand social prosperity. It is with distinct social value and economic value. In the history,maternity insurance is the product of industrilization and socialization. The stateestablished and developed maternity insurance through compusory legislation. It showsthat the state acknowledged the values of the mothers. The establishment of maternityinsurance will help improve the quality of the population. It is the sign of the progressof human society. Our country has established maternity insurance system in1951.Maternity insurance systerm has been developed for more than60years’. Compared toold-age pension, medical insurance and other social insurance, China’s maternityinsurance system developed slowly. Untill now, maternity insurance systerm existsseveral problems.Maternity leave is one kind of benefit provided by maternity insurance, for theprotection of pregnant women. Maternity leave is sufficient and fexible provided byforeign countries. However, maternity leave in our countries exists a lot of problems.Firstly, maternity insurance in China haven’t provide paternity leave for fathers,which in fact damages the interests of men. Meanwhile, maternity insurance provide arich leave and benefit for women only. That will impose a big cost in women. Theemployers will prefer men to women. So, the lack of paternity leave will increase theunequality of the gender.Secondly, China’s growing number of dual-career families, traditional familystructure and the "core" families lead the families to bear the heavy economic andtiming burden of raising and taking care of children. Our maternity insurance does notprovide parental leave and parental benefits for families’ raising children, which is notgood for family stability and the healthy growth of infants.Finally, the total maternity leave is very short. Tha level of maternity leave can’tmeet the need of families with new-born children.In this paper, taking family needs and gender equality in consideration, I willintroduce and campare the maternity leave in our country and in abroad. Learningforeign experience in maternity leave will help me to give suitable suggestions onperfecting maternity leave. This paper is divided into five parts as follows:The first part maily discuss the backgroud and the significance of the article, statethe literature review, theoretical analysis, introduce paper’s research method andmentality, innovation points and shortcomings.In the second part, I will introduce foreign experience in maternity leave, paternityleave and parental leave. Social welfare states always provide sufficient maternity leaveand give flexibility to the parents for using parental leave. Social insurance countriestends to give less leave, and don’t provide paternity leave. Learning foreign experienceon parental leave can help me to give more detail suggestions to perfect parental leave.In the third part, firstly, explain some concepts. Review the law of maternity leave.Then, find out the problems existed in maternity leave.In the fourth part, find out the reasons which cause the problems. Traditionalgender structure, the dual-employee family, and so on case the problems.In the fifth part, I will give some suggestions on how to perfect our maternity leavesysterm.