France Sticks to Its Family-Friendly Benefits - Building Gender Balanced Business

France’s family-friendly measures include long maternity leaves, child-support payments, public schooling for toddlers and even nanny subsidies. Expensive as they are, there is no move to get rid of them, even in this time of financial crisis and economic slump.

• The basic monthly child-support payments have been in place for decades and vary according to the number of children. The various programs of financial support can rise to more than $800 a month, plus the value of the public schooling or care for very young children.

• A more recent measure has made it possible for mothers of three children to take off up to three years while receiving about $600 a month, in addition to the usual child-support payments. More than half a million mothers have received benefits under the program since it began in the 1990s.

• “You couldn’t imagine bringing up an end to this system in France,” said Rachel Silvera, a specialist on women in the workplace at the University of Paris.

• About 60 percent of women have entered the workforce, a number that is rising even as the fertility rate grows.

• The overriding reason for France’s growing birthrate, Silvera said, is the government programs that allow women, married or unmarried, to raise children without abandoning their jobs.

• France is not alone: Northern European countries with strong representation of women in the workforce are also those with the continent’s highest birthrates. Gilles Pinson, a specialist at the French National Institute for Demographic Studies, said the reason is that those countries also are the ones with the most social benefits for working mothers.

The Washington Post article outlining the array of parenting assistance, and their effect on the French economy and society