Employment Law when my career is ... emm ... gaining momentum ... you know? ... and to stop for 5 years it was just not the right time, career wise ... I mean, in 5 years I’d become outdated in my field ... I’d have lost all I studied for during the last 10 years ... and ... emm ... the fact that it is unpaid also matters ... I would not have been able to do it financially ... so there are two things ... career wise and financially ... Corinne is a full-time gynaecologist, and pregnant with a second child. She aims to achieve the post of consultant in Malta’s state hospital. However, she seems convinced that care leave will prove detrimental to her career advancement: ... I would like to proceed to the consultant grade ... eventually ... but it seems unlikely that that will ever happen ... at this stage of my life I will probably take maternity leave or unpaid leave ... that would mean I will be pushed down the career scale ... emm ... I am going to take maternity leave ... that’s for sure ... whether or not I’ll take a year unpaid is still debatable ... I’m still trying ... if ... if possible, I will try to avoid it ... it will definitely affect my career progression ... you cannot ignore the fact that being away from the department for 3, 4, 5 years ... I mean ... when it comes to career advancement ... you know?
8. Gender equality in unpaid parental leave? In many respects, there seem to be some contradictions, at policy level, in Malta’s parental leave benefit. For example, does not unpaid parental leave perpetuate a traditional gender regime? Does not women’s overwhelming take-up of parental leave reaffirm a gendered domestic division of labour, and women’s dependence on men? Does not the gender wage differential automatically predispose women and not men to unpaid parental leave? Bussemaker and Kees van Kersbergen15 signal that ‘a possible loss of earnings as a consequence of parental leave easily extends the inequality between men and women on the labour market, because the earnings of men are not interrupted’. Alternatively, unpaid parental leave may cause financial hardship to those who cannot afford to live on one breadwinner income. 15 Jet Bussemaker and Kees van Kersbergen, ‘Contemporary Social-Capitalist Welfare States and Gender Inequality; in Diane Sainsbury (ed.), Gender and Welfare State Regimes (Oxford University Press 1999).
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