Child Care Leave 2.0 – Suggestions for the improvement of the EU Maternity and Parental Leave Directives from a rights perspective

Abstract

In August 2015, the European Commission launched its ‘Roadmap for a new start to address the challenges of work-life balance faced by working families’. Whilst it now seems quite serious about setting up a coherent legal framework, with full respect for the equal opportunities for women and men in the labour market, two elements have remained absent from the debate, that is the fact that the main focus is still on the nuclear family, and the fact that the gendered division of care activities remains out of sight. This article intends to draw attention to these elements, hoping that the Commission could still take them into account with regard to the revision of the Maternity Leave Directive. The first section provides a critical overview of the current legislative framework. The second section then presents a number of suggestions for a new legislative framework that is not detrimental to women workers and that caters for all sorts of families.