Women in the USA do not enjoy paid maternity leaves common in almost all countries: "out of 168 nations in a Harvard University study last year, 163 had some form of paid maternity leave, leaving the United States in the company of Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland" (The Associated Press, "U.S. Stands Apart from Other Nations on Maternity Leave," USA Today, 26 July 2006, <http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-07-26-maternity-leave_x.htm>).
The Harvard study in question, "The Work, Family, and Equity Index: Where Does the United States Stand Globally?" (by Jody Heymann, Alison Earle, Stephanie Simmons, Stephanie M. Breslow, and April Kuehnhoff of The Project on Global Working Families, available at <http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/globalworkingfamilies/images/report.pdf>), reveals many more areas where American women enjoy fewer rights than women in many other countries in the world: Areas where the U.S. lags behind: Working conditions • 163 countries around the world offer guaranteed paid leave to women in connection with childbirth. The U.S. does not. • The only other industrialized country which does not have paid maternity or parental leave for women, Australia, guarantees a full year of unpaid leave to all women in the country. In contrast, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in the U.S. provides only 12 weeks of unpaid leave to approximately half of mothers in the U.S. and nothing for the remainder. • 45 countries ensure that fathers either receive paid paternity leave or have a right to paid parental leave. The United States guarantees fathers neither paid paternity nor paid parental leave. • At least 76 countries protect working women's right to breastfeed; the U.S. does not, in spite of the fact that breastfeeding has been shown to reduce infant mortality several-fold. • In fact, nearly two-thirds of these countries protect breastfeeding for 15 months or longer. Nearly nine out of ten protect this right for at least a year. • At least 96 countries around the world in all geographic regions and at all economic levels mandate paid annual leave. The U.S. does not require employers to provide paid annual leave. • At least 37 countries have policies guaranteeing parents some type of paid leave specifically for when their children are ill. Of these countries, two-thirds guarantee more than a week of paid leave, and more than one-third guarantee 11 or more days. • 139 countries provide paid leave for short- or long-term illnesses, with 117 providing a week or more annually. The U.S. provides only unpaid leave for serious illnesses through the FMLA, which does not cover all workers. • 40 countries have government-mandated evening and night wage premiums. The U.S. does not. • At least 98 countries require employers to provide a mandatory day of rest: a period of at least 24 hours off each week. The U.S. does not guarantee workers this weekly break. • At least 84 countries have laws that fix the maximum length of the work week. The U.S. does not have a maximum length of the work week or a limit on mandatory overtime per week. • 42 countries guarantee leave for major family events; in 37 of these countries, the leave is paid. Services for children • The U.S. is tied with Ecuador and Suriname for 39th in enrollment in early childhood care and education for 3–5 year olds. Nearly all European countries perform better. A wide range of developing and transitioning countries had higher enrollment rates than the U.S., despite being poorer. • The U.S. is tied for 91st out of 151 countries in the area of preprimary student-to-staff ratios. • In terms of the percentage of GDP spent on early childhood education, recent data place the U.S. in a seven-way tie for 13th place out of 30 OECD countries. Previous studies of a larger number of countries showed the United States to be 20th out of 72 countries. The relatively low percentage of GDP spent is of particular concern, given the low enrollment and low student-to-staff ratios. • Fifty-four nations have longer school years than the U.S. Twenty of these countries have a school year which is more than 20 days longer than that of the U.S., adding practically a full month to the school calendar. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
