When tracing a woman’s career across her various life stages, the ebbs and flows will impact the support she needs from her employer and the way she embraces the workplace, from building a family to parental leave to balancing child rearing and later, experiencing perimenopause and menopause.
As the middle-aged mother of two young children, I can attest to the very different types of support and benefits I’ve needed over the last five years, including the coverage of fertility drugs, top-up of employment insurance benefits and flexible working options. (Guess which two of these three things I didn’t have.)
In addition, with the industry increasingly discussing menopause and employers introducing various levels of support, I know more than ever what I’m likely to require in the next five to 10 years when it comes to benefits coverage and workplace accommodations. It’s been so great to hear more women talk about these experiences and see more employers bringing the topic to the forefront of employee wellness.
Read: How Canadian employers are redesigning benefits to support women at every life stage
For this year’s Women’s Issue, the Cover Story explores this dynamic through interviews with women of different ages, at different life stages and with different priorities. These women are having varied experiences because of what their employer chooses to offer in their benefits plans — for example, contrast 38-year-old Priya, who paid more than $15,000 out of pocket for fertility costs after her employer told her unapologetically that it didn’t cover these costs, with Hanna, who’s employer covers some fertility drugs, which she needed to freeze her eggs in her mid-30s.
(I try not to think about all of the money I would have saved if I worked for an employer that covered even a little bit of the costs I — gladly — paid to build my family, not to mention the full maternity leaves I missed out on because I didn’t have a top-up to EI benefits.)
Speaking of EI benefits, it was clear a few years ago that the federal government was on the same page with the many employers that are paying attention to what women in the workforce need. In its 2018 budget, it introduced a new approach to shared parental leave, which came in from March 2019, providing all parents — including adoptive or same-sex parents — with either five or eight extra weeks of parental benefits under the EI system in an effort to encourage more parents to share the work of raising children, with the goal of improving women’s experience in the workforce.
But six years later, is the approach working? This month’s Head to Head poses the question to two experts. Work-Life Harmony Enterprises’ Nora Spinks said the ‘use it or lose it’ portion has seen positive results, with more men taking parental leave. However, she also highlighted that the program doesn’t take into account different family dynamics, such as parents of multiples and single parents.
Moms at Work’s Allison Venditti praised the growing normalization of men taking leaves of absence to help raise children, but she also noted the amount of leave that’s paid (33 per cent for those taking 18 months and 55 per cent for those taking 12 months — both with a maximum cap that’s very challenging to live on) continues to be an issue.
While both women take different viewpoints, they’re essentially saying the same thing: the system works for many women, but not for everyone, which means it isn’t equitable. Both also point out there’s more to be done by the government — and employers — to facilitate the experiences of working parents in balancing their careers and personal lives, as well as championing equity for everyone.
That takes us back to the Cover Story, which illustrates the disparities many women face because of the employer they choose to work for. Perhaps there’s a wider role for the government to play here — Spinks suggests tax incentives and credits for employers — but I implore all organizations to consider how benefits and the workplace are evolving, as well as what they can do to facilitate a workplace that helps women thrive. That may include the decisions an employer makes about what’s covered by its benefits plan, whether it provides a top-up to EI benefits or the flexibility — or lack thereof — it offers its employees to manage the increasingly fine balance between work and life.
Perhaps ‘balance’ isn’t the right word. Most women — myself included — aren’t looking for a 50/50 balance all the way through their careers. It will shift depending on their stage of life: when they become parents and are raising young children, for example, the personal side of the scale will rise dramatically, but it won’t stay that way forever.
Jennifer Paterson is the editor of Benefits Canada and the Canadian Investment Review.