In reply to Anna:

A collective responsibility, I would guess. Govt / Parliament legislate... employers translate, implement, adopt and adapt nimbly and elegantly as social attitudes change (as you say, Anna); others question, challenge, lobby, enforce where necessary, etc.

In reply to Anna:

Again, I do agree with the concept Anna, however pay rates are also a decision made by employers, but there was over a century of disquiet about women being paid less and considerable societal pressure (particularly during the war years, when there was no choice but to employ women in traditional' male' roles, but they were still paid around 50% less than the men doing the job previously). But it didn't change until Government legislated in 1970 with the Equal Pay act. If a Government can legislate that men and women must be paid equal pay for equal work, there is no reason why they can't legislate for equal parental benefits.

You are right that we do have a role to play, but I agree with Steve that it is a shared responsibility and the difficulty at the moment is that terrible as it is, many employers as a rule, would not see a father who wanted to have more involvement with their children as an attractive appointment regardless of their skills/experience etc.

Our individual influence on that is limited because the idea that women are the main carer is still so engrained in society. The changing employment market will alter things very slowly, but only by forcing the change with legislation or caselaw, will it become the 'norm' that both parents are equally entitled to any parental support provided their employers in the same way that it is now the norm that men and women are entitled to equal pay (even though we haven't quite got the hang of that yet!)

In reply to Teresa:

Again I have to disagree with you Teresa

The equal pay legislation was particularly ineffective - over forty years later women are still paid less than men. What has changed things to some extent is the fact that many more women go to university now than did forty years ago and employers need their valuable skills.

In terms of social attitudes it does seem to me that these are changing much more quickly than corporate cultures. Just today Timewise has produced a report revealing a staggering 89% of people want to work flexibly - but many have no access to it (timewise.co.uk/.../)
Why the disparity? Surely Corporate HR should be aware of this - it's not new - and lobbying their fellow senior managers to enable more access to flexible working.

In reply to Anna:

I think we agree on the theory Anna, but I think we will have to disagree on the practicalities. I also wouldn't agree that the equal pay legislation has been particularly ineffective - there is still some disparity between the pay for men and women, however before the legislation came in, it was perfectly legal and accepted for organisations to advertise a job with very different pay rates for men and women. The current disparity would be a lot greater without the equal pay legislation.

I agree that more people want to work flexibly, but on a practical level, organisations will not consider equalising parental pay for men and women or offering more flexible working, without a clear business benefit for them doing it. We can point out that it helps to attract and retain high quality candidates and encourage change, but in my experience, lobbying managers at an organisational level, would simply damage HR's reputation and enforce the (wholly incorrect, but very common) view that we are soft and fluffy with no understanding of the business.

Unfortunately history shows that culture will only change if it a) wants to, or b) is forced to (e.g SportsDirect and currently Ryanair).

In reply to Teresa:

Hi Teresa, yes we disagree on practicalities but that's what this community is for - to allow us to debate.

I also suspect that we've had different experiences. For example, I was at PwC when they first introduced their initiatives to support fathers and knowing the culture as it was then I was surprised. I asked my HR colleague who'd got the initiative agreed how he'd done it and he replied "dripping tap method" - so sometimes lobbying on 'soft and fluffy' can work - particularly if the employer can see a positive effect on branding.

In reply to Teresa:

@ Teresa - wanting to change is for ME the way to get buy in, and therefore real  enduring change

"How many psychiatrists do you need to change a light bulb?"

"Only one...... but the light bulb MUST want to change"

In reply to Anna:

hi

However, like a bad advert (think Safe Style) we are all talking about it! No publicity is bad.....

In reply to Jo:

Even four months later :-)

In reply to Keith:

The thread was 'bumped' by a spam post, which I now cannot get rid of without removing all subsequent posts as I was experimenting with some functionality. Ah well.