Argentina: paternity leave could go from 2 to 90 days

In Argentina, a bill aims to increase paternity leave from 2 to 90 days.

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Text by: Théo Conscience Follow

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Argentinian President Alberto Fernandez announced on Monday May 2 that he wanted to overhaul the parental leave system.

The bill, which will be sent to Congress next week, concerns more than 8 million people, and in particular young fathers who would see their paternity leave increase from 2 to 90 days.

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From our correspondent in Buenos Aires,

With 90 days of paternity leave, Argentina would be one of the most generous countries in the world in this area.

Only a handful of countries do better in the world.

We are thinking in particular of Japan or South Korea, where it is possible to take up to a year of paternity leave, and especially of Scandinavian countries such as Sweden, often cited as an example, where parents have 16 months of leave to share among them.

The 90 days offered by the Peronist government in Argentina is

, for example, and it is above all much longer than the two short days to which new Argentinian dads are currently entitled.

The increase would be gradual: we would go to 15 days when the law was adopted, then 30 days two years later, until reaching 90 days of paid leave at 100% of the salary in 2030.

Towards a total reform of the parental leave system

This bill is not just about paternity leave.

The ambition is to completely reform the parental leave system.

The text provides for the creation of a "Global system of care policies", the founding idea of ​​which is that taking care of one's child at birth is both a duty, a right that must be guaranteed and work that should be valued.

To ensure this, the bill therefore provides for an extension of paternity and maternity leave, but also recognizes this right for the self-employed and auto-entrepreneurs, who until now have been excluded.

Another population that would now be entitled to this type of leave: adoptive parents.

In addition to 90 days upon the arrival of the child in the home, they would benefit from 2 to 12 days of leave during the adoption process,

While the government estimates that this law would strengthen the rights of more than 8 million parents, it should not be forgotten that more than a third of Argentine workers belong to the informal economy, and therefore do not have access to leave. parental.

Sign of a gradual change in mentalities, in a country long reputed to be quite macho 

There is a claimed desire here to address the issue of parental leave from a gender perspective.

In the text, there is never any question of father or mother, but of “pregnant person”, that is to say the one who carries the child, or “non-pregnant”.

The bill also takes into account advances in science, in particular by providing days off for couples who have recourse to medically assisted procreation techniques.

Finally, this text on parental leave is a continuation of the work that Argentina has been doing for several years on gender issues.

One thinks of course of the

in 2020, but also of the

, or that on sex change in 2012. All these measures have changed the conception of parenthood in Argentina , and this bill on parental leave proposes to take this into account.

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