As someone who is entering their mid-thirties, I continually think about the next steps for when my husband and I want to start a family. Something that always creeps in the back of my mind is taking time away from our jobs so we can have a baby. So personally, I was looking forward to sitting down with Katie Bethell and chatting about her panel discussion at SXSW, Generous Parental Leave: A Liberty or A Luxury? This panel discussion will help bring employers, employees, and policymakers to better understand what needs to happen in doing their part supporting paid parental leave for all. With the continued encouragement of this issue in the spotlight, Katie is bringing both knowledge and useful tools to help the movement become a reality.
To give some background, Katie is the Founder and Executive Director of PL+US, Paid Leave for the United States. She is a family oriented person herself and believes family should always come first. It is her goal to make sure people can be with their families during these critical moments. PL+US focuses on one single mission: win paid family leave for everyone in the United States. “Our strategy layers public advocacy and accountability campaigns with state-of-the-art communications and digital grassroots engagement to win ambitious solutions for working people in the United States.” Her organization is building a body of knowledge, including annual reports about paid leave practices from employers. To see some of the reports PL+US has put together, visit their reports section here.
The current parental leave laws in place on the national level are not working. Most companies are following the current law of six weeks leave, even though doctors continue to recommend six months for when a child is first born. This time away is not guaranteed paid either and this is where company policies can come into play. Katie role in this debacle is her efforts to helps employees target their own companies to make better policies. In result, she has helped educate and win such organizations as Wal-Mart, Lyft, and Starbucks to name a few. So in her SXSW panel discussion, Katie’s goal is to make sure we see what we can do and how we can become advocates for our companies and communities.
Everyone is fired up right now with women’s rights and I think we can all agree; the time is now. It is 2018 and we cannot pretend that having children and starting a family is not a priority for some. A person’s career should not suffer because of it. I know like most of my colleagues, we are stuck with student loan debt and are in a position where we need our jobs to pay the bills. The moment is long overdue.
Check out Katie’s conversation with Anderson Cooper back in 2012.
Tuesday, March 13th
12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Fairmont – Manchester A
Find out more: Generous Parental Leave: A Liberty or A Luxury?
Featured photo provided by SXSW.