JOhn,

June marks Parenting Month around the world. With much of the world in lockdown, inequality in the family, including marital and parental rights, has been laid bare. Research shows that women are doing more chores and spending more time on childcare during this time. 

Without equality in the family, we will not make equality reality. 

To kick off Parenting Month, we’ve pulled together a to-do list to make equality a reality in the family and around the world:

1⃣ We need to value and encourage both parents’ contribution to childcare equally.

Unequal parental leave laws assume that the responsibility of childcare falls on women and may end up inhibiting women’s full economic participation.

Ireland’s Paternity Leave and Benefit Act 2016 only provides 2 weeks paternity leave, compared to 26 weeks for mothers.

✅ Call on Ireland to ensure paternity leave for fathers

Though some laws assume that the responsibility of childcare falls on the mother, others give preferential right of custody to the father, which limits a mother's right to make decisions over the upbringing over her own child even though she's doing most of the childcare work. In Lebanon, the Personal Status Law of the Catholic Sects provides that the custody rights and duties of parental authority (apart from breastfeeding) are confined to the father. This often leaves Lebanese women unable to have custody of their children.

Our partners in Lebanon are seeing the effects of these discriminatory laws exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Mothers are unable to exercise their visitation rights in lockdown, and the closure of family courts leaves women no avenue to contest the father’s custody.

✅ Call on Lebanon to ensure equal rights for parents

2⃣ We need equality in divorce laws.

Japan’s Civil Code forces women but not men to wait 100 days to remarry after divorce, and states that a child born to a woman within 300 days of the end of a marriage shall be presumed to have been conceived during marriage, which may only be rebutted by the husband.

✅ Call on Japan to ensure women have equal rights to remarry and that no child is denied their right to identity

3⃣ We need to protect all parents’ right to contribute economically.

Laws that protect the stereotype that men are the head of the household and the sole breadwinner and women’s role is in the home, restrict women from being economically independent and reinforce gender stereotypes.

In Cameroon, a husband can object to his wife taking up work 'in the interest of the marriage or their children'.

✅ Call on Cameroon to protect women’s right to earn their own money

In 2020, inequality in the family is not acceptable. Thank you for taking action to make equality reality.

In Solidarity 

Bryna Subherwal

Advocacy Campaign Manager