Biological burden

Striking a balance between home and work has been tough for them, which is one of the top three reasons many families decided not to have more children after the universal second-child policy took effect in 2016, the National Health Commission said on June 1.

Citing figures from a survey, the commission said: "About 34.3 percent of women said their earnings were cut after childbirth. Among them, 42.9 percent had their salaries cut by at least half."

During an earlier interview with China News Service, Chang Kai, head of Renmin University of China's Labor Relations Research Center, said it is very difficult for many enterprises to get rid of gender discrimination in the current social environment, and the traditional view that women should be responsible for household chores still hampers their employment.

"But the main problem is that existing rules and regulations aimed at protecting the rights of female workers are not very strict, and their implementation is weak," he said.

Chang said women have to bear the biological burden of taking maternity leave and breast-feeding, which will drive up enterprises' human resources costs.

"Governments are suggested to provide relevant subsidies to businesses, and step up social security and maternity insurance programs," he said.

The coverage of maternity insurance has been rising in recent years. The National Healthcare Security Administration said recently that about 235 million people had enrolled in maternity insurance programs last year, up by 10 percent from 2019. Maternity insurance, paid for by employers and local governments, reimburses women who leave work to give birth.

But, based on experiences in other countries, it's not enough to dispel employers' misgivings, Li said. "A feasible solution adopted by Germany is to use funds from the national social security or medical insurance programs to make up the balance (of insurance premiums), instead of asking employers to shoulder the burden," she said.

In addition to maternity leave, Li added, favorable policies such as paternity leave and parental leave, have not been embraced or enforced strongly enough.

"The rollout of paternity leave is meant to lessen discrimination against women, but it is not clear who will pay the salaries of male employees during their time off. As a result, both employers and employees are lukewarm about it," she said.

Li said detailed regulations are also needed on how to implement parental leave, as the country is encouraging capable regions to launch trial programs.

"Parental leave usually lasts one to three years and can effectively solve the issue of rearing children before they are sent to kindergarten at 3 years old," she said.