#'employers are increasingly discriminating against women and mothers who need to work to support their families because the middle class is

[clementimetodie]

Why does the right constantly believe they are not being idealistic, the world needs to conform to your beliefs for them to work too, things are not going to just turn on a dime because you think you're intellectually superior for not thinking about the impact your changes would have on other people

[silvestromedia]

Pope Francis: ‘We must save lives, not build weapons to destroy them’ A new book entitled “God and the World to Come” hits bookstores on Tuesday, in which Pope Francis grants a book-length interview to Italian journalist Domenico Agasso (Edizione Piemme-LEV). We publish here an excerpt translated from the original Italian. DOMENICO AGASSO Q: Your Holiness, how do you interpret the "earthquake" that hit the world in 2020 in the form of a novel coronavirus? "In life there are moments of darkness. Too often we think that they only happen to others and not to us, to someone else, in another country, perhaps on a distant continent. Instead, we all ended up in the pandemic’s tunnel. Pain and sorrow have broken through the doors of our homes, invaded our thoughts, attacked our dreams and plans. And so today no one can afford to rest easy. The world will never be the same again. But it is precisely within this calamity that we must grasp those signs which may prove to be the cornerstones of reconstruction. Speeches are not enough to solve emergencies. The pandemic is an alarm signal on which humanity is forced to reflect. This time of trial can thus become a time of wise and far-sighted choices for the good of humanity, of all humanity." Cover page of the book Cover page of the book Q: What urgencies do you perceive? "We can no longer blithely accept inequalities and disruptions to the environment. The path to humanity’s salvation passes through the creation of a new model of development, which unquestionably focuses on coexistence among peoples in harmony with Creation. We need to be aware that every individual action does not remain isolated, for good or evil, but has consequences for others, because everything is connected: Everything! By changing the lifestyles that drive millions of people, especially children, into the grip of hunger, we will be able to lead a more austere existence that would make a fair distribution of resources possible. This does not mean diminishing some people’s rights in order to drive downward leveling, but rather involves guaranteeing more and broader rights to those who currently have none." Q: Do you see encouraging signs? "There are already popular movements today which are trying to promote these notions and operations ‘from below’, along with some institutions and associations. They are trying to concretize a new way of looking at our common home: no longer as a warehouse of resources to be exploited, but a sacred garden to be loved and respected, through sustainable behaviors. There is also an awareness among young people, particularly within ecological movements. If we don't roll up our sleeves and immediately take care of the Earth, with radical personal and political choices, with an economic ‘green’ turn by directing technological developments in this direction, sooner or later our common home will throw us out the window. We cannot waste any more time." Q: What are your thoughts on finance and its relationship with government? "I believe that if we manage to heal it from the dominant speculative mentality and re-establish it with a ‘soul’, according to fair criteria, we will be able to aim at the objective of reducing the gap between those who have access to credit and those who do not. And if one day, in the not-too-distant future, conditions are in place for every person to invest according to ethical and responsible principles, we will obtain the result of limiting support to companies that are harmful to the environment and to peace. In the state in which humanity finds itself, it is scandalous to continue financing industries that do not contribute to the inclusion of the excluded and the promotion of the least, and which penalize the common good by polluting Creation. These are the four criteria for choosing which businesses to support: inclusion of the excluded, promotion of the least, the common good, and care of Creation." Q: We are facing one of the worst humanitarian crises since World War II. Countries are taking emergency measures to deal with the pandemic and a dramatic global economic downturn. What do you expect from government leaders? "Right now, it is a matter of rebuilding from the rubble. And that burden weighs heavily on those in government positions. In our concern for an uncertain future, for the jobs that are in danger of being lost or that have been lost, for the income that is less and less sufficient, and for the other consequences that the current crisis brings with it, it is fundamental to govern with honesty, transparency and farsightedness. But each of us, not only political leaders, is called to eradicate indifference, corruption and connivance with crime." Q: What principle can we be inspired by? "What is happening can awaken everyone. It is time to remove social injustice and marginalization. If we seize the current trial as an opportunity, we can prepare for tomorrow under the banner of human fraternity, to which there is no alternative, because without an overall vision there will be no future for anyone. By putting this lesson to good use, the leaders of nations, together with those with social responsibilities, can guide the peoples of the Earth towards a more prosperous and fraternal future. Heads of state should talk to one another, confront each other more and agree on strategies. Let us all keep in mind that there is something worse than this crisis: the drama of wasting it. We cannot emerge from a crisis the same as before: we either come out better or we come out worse." Q: What attitude of ours would waste it? "By closing in on ourselves. Instead, we can heal injustice by building a new world order based on solidarity, studying innovative methods to eradicate bullying, poverty and corruption, all working together, each for their own part, without delegating and passing the buck. Also by working to provide healthcare for all. In this way, by practicing and demonstrating social cohesion, we will be able to rise again." Q: Concretely, where might we begin? "It is no longer tolerable to continue to manufacture and traffic in arms, expending huge amounts of capital which should be used to treat people and save lives. We can no longer pretend that a dramatically vicious cycle of armed violence, poverty and senseless and indifferent exploitation of the environment has not crept in. It is a cycle that prevents reconciliation, fuels human rights violations and hinders sustainable development. Against this planetary discord that is nipping the future of humanity in the bud, we need political action that is the fruit of international harmony. United in fraternity, humanity is able to face common threats, without any more counterproductive mutual recriminations, instrumentalization of problems, short-sighted nationalism, protectionist propaganda, isolationism and other forms of political selfishness." Q: Women continue to bear the weight of all recessions: what do you think about this topic? "Women urgently need to be helped in caring for their children and not be discriminated against in terms of pay and work, or with the loss of work because they are women. On the contrary, their presence is increasingly valuable at the center of society, politics, employment, and institutional renewal. If we get better at offering them favorable conditions, they will be able to make a decisive contribution to the reconstruction of the economy and societies to come, because women make the world beautiful and make contexts more inclusive. Besides, we are all trying to get back on our feet, so we cannot overlook the fact that the rebirth of humanity began with a woman. Salvation was born from the Virgin Mary. That's why there can be no salvation without woman. If we cherish the future, if we desire a flourishing tomorrow, we must give the right space to women." Q: What would you specifically recommend to parents? "Playtime with your children is the best time you can have. I know of one family that has created an 'institutional' element in the home: 'The Program.' Every Saturday or Sunday, the mother and father take a sheet of paper and, with the children, agree and write down all the play dates between children and parents in the coming week, and then hang it on a little board in the kitchen. The children's eyes sparkle with contentment as they write down ‘the schedule’, which has now become a ritual. This mother and father are educating. This is what I said to them: "Sow education." By playing with their father and mother, a child learns to get along with other people, and learns about the existence of rules and the need to respect them. They also acquire the self-confidence that will help them as they step into the outside world. At the same time, children help their parents, above all, in two things: giving greater value to life, and remaining humble. For them, they are first and foremost Dad and Mom, the rest comes later: work, travel, successes and worries. And that protects them from the temptations of narcissism and an unbridled ego, which they risk falling into every day." Q: The violence of Covid-19 has ravaged the already precarious prospects of millions of young people around the world. Young people are trudging along under a cloak of uncertainty and reductions in educational, vocational, social, economic and political investment, which is depriving them of the right to a future. What would you like to say to the "Covid generations"? "I encourage them not to give in to the economic downturn, to not stop daydreaming. Don't be afraid to dream big. By working for their dreams, they can protect them from those who want to take them away from them: pessimists, dishonest people and profiteers. Perhaps never before as in this third millennium have younger generations paid the highest price for the economic, labor, health and moral crisis. But feeling sorry for ourselves leads nowhere. On the contrary, the crisis would only have the better of us. Rather, by continuing to fight as many are already doing, young people will not remain inexperienced, bitter and immature. They will not cease in their search for opportunities. And then, there is knowledge. In Genesis (ch.2) we read that the Lord, after having created the heavens and the earth, takes the man and places him in the garden of Eden, so that he may cultivate it and come to know it. He does not put him in retirement, or on vacation, or on the couch: he sends him to study and work. God made man capable and eager to know and to work, and to love. "You shall love your neighbor as yourself". There is no commandment more important than this one, Jesus says to the disciples (Mk 12:31). Young people have the vigor and strength to relaunch the fundamental tasks assigned by God, and thus become men and women of knowledge, love and charity. By opening themselves to encounter and wonder, they will be able to rejoice in the beauty and gifts of life and nature, emotions, and love in all its forms. Always moving forward to learn something from every experience, spreading knowledge and amplifying the hope inherent in youth, they will take the reins of life into their own hands and at the same time generate vitality that will advance humanity, making it free. Therefore, even if there seems to be no end in sight to the darkness, we must not lose heart. And, as Saint Philip Neri said, don't forget to be cheerful, as much as possible." Published by Piemme da Mondadori Libri S.p.A. © 2021 Mondadori Libri S.p.A., Milan, Italy © 2021 Vatican Publishing House, Vatican City

[hollywoodjuliorivas]

mo

How to make your firm more diverse and inclusive

Tips for chief executives

Print edition | Business

Nov 7th 2019

To: ceo

cc: pa

Subject: A hard-headed guide to corporate diversity

Dear David,

You face pressure to “do something” about diversity in your company—not only from your wife and woke children. Corporate clients increasingly demand it in your supply chain. Regulators, who use a “stable” or “inclusive” culture as a proxy for low risk, are breathing down your neck. Governments like Britain’s, which now mandates pay-gap reporting, insist on making more of your sensitive data public. And employees, including former ones, can air their complaints on social media.

Small wonder that 87% of your fellow bosses told consultants at pwc that diversity is a business priority. I’m sure you did, too. After all, you recently posted a job opening for a diversity manager. You were not alone; the number of such offers in Britain has doubled in the past year, say analysts at Glassdoor, a recruitment website. Since June 2017 more than 800 American ceos have signed a pledge to “advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace”.

That is where we are: lots of talk, plenty of initiatives, little change on the ground. Between 2015 and 2018 the share of female executives at large (mostly) American and British firms went from 12% to 14%; for ethnic minorities it moved from 12% to 13%. The ftse 100 has fewer female ceos (six) than it does bosses who share your name (seven). In American companies with over 100 employees, the share of black men in management was 3.4% in 2017, half their share in the population as a whole—and virtually unchanged from 3% in 1985. White women make up 25% of executives and senior managers, compared with 60% for white men. Something is clearly amiss.

In the past this letter would have gone straight to your legal department. Since the term “diversity” entered the corporate lexicon in the 1960s it has been code for avoiding lawsuits—especially in America, where companies have coughed up billions in fines for discrimination over the years. The financial sector still treats it mostly as a compliance issue.

Now you are no doubt tempted to forward it to someone in hr, almost certainly a woman with an arts degree, a sound moral compass and too little power. Don’t. This is your problem. Without your leadership it is unlikely to be solved soon.

Keep reading

Deep inside, you may be wondering if anything really needs solving. The short answer is: it does. With that in mind, you should ask yourself three things.

First, why does diversity matter to your firm? Is your reputation in trouble, as it was for Uber, Nike, Lloyd’s of London and others scarred by #MeToo? Do you, like consumer giants such as p&g, hope that more diversity makes for better products? Are you concerned about attracting and retaining bright sparks? You would be in good company: 97% of executives fret about increased competition for talent (according to Mercer’s hr consultants).

Or are you hoping that diversity will boost the bottom line? To be perfectly honest, I have no idea if it does. It is hard to tell if diversity helps firms do well, or if successful firms are also more enlightened on other matters. But variety has been linked to innovation, productivity and, for example in diverse teams of surgeons, fewer mistakes. Lack of it breeds groupthink—which in turn can lead to disasters. The Bay of Pigs invasion and the Lehman Brothers collapse stemmed from narrow-mindedness. And employees who believe their firm cares about gender diversity are 40% more likely to be satisfied at work—and possibly more productive as a result.

Once you have sorted out the why, consider where you want to get to. Some firms, like Facebook, Nike or p&g, say they wish to mirror their customer base. Others are keen not to recruit from an artificially thin talent pool. Goldman Sachs claims its new entry-level recruitment targets—50% female and, in America, 14% Hispanic and 11% black—are based on things like graduation rates. Clear goals make it easier to assess if you are on track. But make them attainable. Qantas’s goal of 40% of its pilot intake to be female by 2028 is as admirable as it looks unrealistic: today just one in 20 pilots worldwide is a woman.

The third question concerns barriers that stop diverse talent from flourishing at your firm. Mapping how it flows through your organisation and where the blockages and leaks happen is a start. A McKinsey study of more than 300 companies identified the second step of the career ladder, from entry level to manager, as the “broken rung”: for every 100 men only 72 women (and just 68 Hispanic and 58 black ones) earned that critical early promotion. When Google was losing women in disproportionate numbers it homed in on maternity as the principal cause; the technology giant increased maternity leave and support for mothers returning to work.

Staff surveys can help, provided they are large and comprehensive enough. After its #MeToo moment, Lloyd’s, an insurance market, found that 45% of staff felt unable to raise concerns about improper conduct. Employees are now encouraged to speak up, including through a bullying-and-harassment helpline. A “culture dashboard” tracking progress on survey metrics will be published with the Lloyd’s annual report.

Now you’ve got your diversity-and-inclusion priorities straight and diagnosed what needs fixing. Good. Before you order a rainbow float for a Pride parade and send staff on a micro-aggression avoidance course, here is what not to do.

American firms spend billions a year on training. Half of large ones have unconscious-bias seminars. Most of these “d&i” programmes are a waste. Or worse: recent research from America shows that diversity statements can put off minorities, possibly because they perceive them as tokenism. Often, firms do d but forget i, which is about ensuring that the workforce is not just diverse, but thriving. Too many try to fix people instead of procedures. Training women to be more assertive in asking for a promotion or pay rise is pointless; they are just as likely to ask for these but also likelier to be seen as pushy when they do. Ushering your managers onto the “Check Your Blind Spots bus”, currently touring America as part of the ceos’ drive, is unlikely to do much. “Days of understanding”, popular in American offices, risk causing “diversity fatigue”. It is hard to beat bias out of individuals—easier to root it out of systems.

The don’ts

Take Silicon Valley. Big Tech has splurged on d&i to little effect. Representation of blacks and Hispanics has been flat (see chart). Girls Who Code, an industry-sponsored ngo, found that a quarter of young women who applied for internships at tech firms said they were asked inappropriate or biased questions. Others reported being flirted with or demeaned. It’s no use hiring diverse coders if the message then is: wear a hoodie and pretend to be a guy, or this is no place for you. They will underperform—or flee, leaving you as undiverse as before. Firms that do not change their ways beyond recruitment see high attrition rates of diverse talent. A lack of diversity is a symptom of deeper problems that a few diversity hires won’t mend.

At this point the how should be relatively clear. In a nutshell, it is all about creating a level playing field. When recruiting, software can mute biases by concealing giveaways to a candidate’s gender or ethnic identity. These include names but also less obvious hints like the sports they play. If only the usual suspects apply, look harder. Specialised recruitment drives, such as visiting “black” colleges or advertising in women’s forums, appear to work. The Bank of England no longer visits the Russell group of top universities, whose graduates apply in spades anyway, and focuses instead on less elite schools. bhp, an Anglo-Australian mining giant, broadened its search for female miners by recruiting from professions, such as nursing, with some similar skills.

In an effort to find trainees from different backgrounds, British law firms are trying “contextual recruitment”. An applicant with Bs from a school where everyone got Cs may be more impressive than one with As from a place full of A* pupils. Rare, a recruitment firm, has developed software which screens candidates for disadvantage and gauges their outperformance against the average for their school.

Once in the workplace, the clearer your criteria for professional advancement, the better. Informality is the enemy of women and minorities. It perpetuates bias. Surveys of American engineers and lawyers found that female workers were nearly twice as likely as their male peers to be saddled with “office housework”, like setting up meetings and conference calls. White men were likelier to be given careerenhancing tasks such as client meetings.

Sponsorship schemes are an effective way to ensure traditionally sidelined groups get a fair shot. PayScale, a pay-comparison site, found that employees with a sponsor made 11.6% more than those without. The Bank of England has offered most of its sponsorship places to ethnic-minority women. Staff surveys, if bite-sized but regular, can bring clarity to fuzzy inclusion metrics. “Psychological safety”, lingo for an environment where people feel free to speak their mind, can be tracked with questions like “are your ideas regularly attributed to someone else?” or “are you regularly interrupted in meetings?” Rotating who chairs a meeting, or a firm word with loudmouths who dominate it, can help.

Many employers—yourself included—would be horrified to learn that they implicitly require employees who want to be considered leadership material to adjust their behaviour. Women shouldn’t need to “act like a man”, gay employees to “act straight” or people with frizzy hair to treat it to “look professional” (ie, white). Let grievances fester and your workers will lose motivation or simply leave.

That is a lot to take in. But unless you do, your most valuable resource—workers—will not be as good as it could be. Best to get ahead of the problem. It isn’t that hard. And it can pay off mightily.

Yours,

Shareholder■

[womenlaborachivments1929]

Women Labor Discrimination

Before the great depression, the ideal family in the United States of America was living under the “family-wage” ideology.(3) This ideology enforced the domestic ideal of placing women in the home, while waged work received an increasingly masculine domination.(4) Thus emerged the term “breadwinner which was featured predominantly within industrial workmen.(5) The idea of the family-wage theory legitimizes a division of labor by gender. Women were to work at home and take care of family needs, whereas the man was demanded to keep the family afloat through economic stability. The family-wage ideal notions that female participation in the labor force is only a supplement to the family income. According to the works of Milkman Ruth, the  family-wage theory justified unequal wage rates and sex segregation in the labor market.(6) Although women were aware that they would be making less than their male counterparts, they still recognized the importance of entering the workforce in attempts to compensate for a reduction in family income. A study conducted in 1932 by Cecile LaFolette from Columbia University analyzed the reasoning behind women entering the workforce. The study surveyed 652 women of the business and professional class, in which 67 percent of women gave economic necessity as their reason for working.(7) Therefore, many women entering the workforce had one goal, which was to provide for their families. When women began to enter the workforce they changed the dynamic between employment levels within predominant male jobs. Historian Susan Ware states that, women began working in industrial jobs that were before made for men and because of this, they experienced a reinforcement of traditional stereotypes of what constituted women's work.(8) The argument that women were working in industrial jobs is supported by Mary Pidgeon. Pigeon reported trends from the Women's Bureau regarding the employment of women in the United States from 1928-1936. In her study she found that Employment data in 1930 depicted nearly 55 % of all women were engaged in manufacturing and mechanical industries in the entire United States.(9) When women began to work in these industrial manufacturing services, they had to deal with the taunting comments based on their traditional role of housekeeping and the idea that they were taking away jobs from men. During the aftermath of the great depression reports were released where the number of gainfully employed women in 1939 roughly equalled the national unemployment total.(10) Norman Cousins, who is an american political journalist, stated, “Simply fire the women, who shouldn’t be working anyway, and hire the men. Presto! No unemployment. No relief rolls. No depression.”(11) These types of comments reinforced the gender-stereotype role of women, and diminished their importance. Political scientists such as Norman Cousins failed to recognize that these women were working as part of an economic necessity. Male unionists also reinforced this stereotype by frequently suggesting that women were taking men jobs.(12) This propaganda that was being infused by scientists and unions was a way of diminishing the women's role in the workforce and trying to push them back to their housekeeping roles. However, these comments made against women stealing jobs from men were actually false. A study from the United States of America, Women's bureau states that  a closer examination of the women working data reveals that this was not the case, since the major decline for men ordinarily was not within the area of women employment.(13) The Women's Bureau was created by law in 1920 to formulate standards and policies to promote the welfare of wage-earning women, improve their working conditions, increase their efficiency, and advance their opportunities for profitable employment.(14) Therefore, it is a primary source that depicts the true reality of what was happening at the time between male and female workers. However, the media attention against women working was so enormous, focusing on advertising the effects of women's work on taking away male jobs, family life and the fact that a mother's absence from the home was automatically morally harmful.(15) The media attention infused gender stereo statements creating a determent between marital relations for women and their spouses. 

3- Milkman, Ruth, ed. Women, work, and protest: A century of US women's labor history. Routledge, 2013.

4-Milkman, Ruth, ed. Women, work, and protest: A century of US women's labor history. Routledge, 2013.

5- Milkman, Ruth, ed. Women, work, and protest: A century of US women's labor history. Routledge, 2013.

6-Milkman, Ruth, ed. Women, work, and protest: A century of US women's labor history. Routledge, 2013.

7- Bolin, Winifred D. Wandersee. "The Economics of Middle-Income Family Life: Working Women During the Great Depression." The Journal of American History (1978): 60-74.

8-  Ware, Susan. "Women and the Great Depression." History Now 9 (2009): 2009-03.

9- Pidgeon, Mary. “Trends in the Employment of Women, 1928-36 / by Mary Elizabeth Pidgeon. No.159.” HathiTrust, 1938. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112104139370.

10 -  Ware, Susan. "Women and the Great Depression." History Now 9 (2009): 2009-03.

11-  Ware, Susan. "Women and the Great Depression." History Now 9 (2009): 2009-03.

12 - Milkman, Ruth, and Ruth Milkman. "Women's work and economic crisis: some lessons of the Great Depression." Review of Radical Political Economics 8, no. 1 (1976): 71-97.

13- Pidgeon, Mary. “Trends in the Employment of Women, 1928-36 / by Mary Elizabeth Pidgeon. No.159.” HathiTrust, 1938. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112104139370.

14- U.S Department of Labor, 2020.  “About Us | Women’s Bureau”. ”https://www.dol.gov/agencies/wb/about#:~:text=The%20Women.

15- Braybon, Gail. Women Workers in the First World War. Routledge, 2012.

[deniscollins]

With Paid Leave, Gates Foundation Says There Can Be Too Much of a Good Thing

Since 2015, the Gates Foundation has offered employees one year of fully paid leave to spend with their babies. Researchers report that 3 months or less of paid leave isn’t necessarily enough time for parents and babies to get the full benefits of physical recovery, bonding and breast-feeding; leaves of 9 months or more are harder on businesses, and women who take very long leaves are less likely to stay in the labor force, to earn as much or to achieve senior positions; and around 6 months seems to be the magic number for families to achieve the benefits but to avoid the pitfalls of parental leave. If you were a Gates Foundation executive, would you reduce your paid leave from 1 year down to 6 months, and add a $20,000 stipend for new parents to spend on child care costs and family needs when they return to work: (1) Yes, (2) No? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

As the United States has debated the issue of paid parental leave, a few employers have stood out by providing very generous terms. One has been the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which in 2015 began offering parents one year of fully paid leave to spend with their babies.

It turns out it was too long to be sustainable. Last week, the foundation told employees it was cutting paid parental leave by half, to six months, because yearlong leaves were impairing the work of the foundation. It will add a $20,000 stipend for new parents to spend on child care costs and family needs when they return to work.

The Gates Foundation’s experience highlights the challenges of devising effective family policies. The United States is the only industrialized country not to offer paid leave, though lawmakers in both parties now support some form of it, as do about 80 percent of Americans. Yet on top of questions about whether it should be mandatory and who should pay for it, there has been little agreement on the right length of time — and whether paid leave alone is enough to help working parents.

International evidence points to some answers. Around six months seems to be the magic number for families to achieve the benefits but to avoid the pitfalls of parental leave. And paid leave is not enough: Financial assistance for child care has a bigger effect on women’s ability to keep working.

Three months or less isn’t necessarily enough time for parents and babies to get the full benefits of physical recovery, bonding and breast-feeding, research has found. Babies often aren’t sleeping through the night by then, and infant child care is most expensive. But leaves of nine months or more can backfire. They’re harder on businesses, and women who take very long leaves are less likely to stay in the labor force, to earn as much or to achieve senior positions, research shows.

Steven Rice, chief human resources officer at the Gates Foundation, said in an interview that the decision to offer six months was based on research suggesting it was optimal. Also, it would be easier for the foundation to handle its workload.

Other employers and policymakers have also settled on roughly six months of leave. It’s the period that Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, has proposed offering in his state. Many tech companies give employees four to six months. Netflix, which allows its employees to take a year of paid parental leave, said new parents generally choose to take between four and eight months.

The United States offers 12 weeks of leave, but it’s unpaid, and only a little over half of employees are eligible. Companies have increasinglybegun to offer paid leave voluntarily, but that affects only 16 percent of American workers. There are various leave proposals in Congress, but none have made headway. Child care costs are out of reach for many families — the average cost for an infant in a day care center is $1,230 a month.

Most policy proposals in the United States — in Congress, in state governments and from think tanks — have been for four to 12 weeks. Many of the other countries that offer parental leave give significantly more, in some cases more than a year.

A variety of economic research has compared the results of generous family policies in other rich countries and the lack of such policies in the United States. Although the research doesn’t conclude what would work in the United States, it provides some clues.

One study looked at the effect of paid leave on employment rates, women’s wages and health outcomes for babies. “The sweet spot was probably six to nine months,” said one of the authors, Christopher J. Ruhm, an economist at the University of Virginia. Longer leaves had a negative effect on women’s careers.

In countries with very long leaves, Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn at Cornell found, women are more likely to work, but they are also more likely to be in dead-end jobs than women in the United States.

“A possibility is it encourages employers to kind of mommy-track women, to put women into lower-level positions where it won’t be as difficult to the employer to accommodate a long time out,” Ms. Blau said.

Claudia Olivetti at Boston College and Barbara Petrongolo at Queen Mary University of London found little evidence that extended leaves had a positive effect on women’s employment or earnings — but found that subsidized child care and preschool did. “You want to make it easier for mothers to work, and when you talk about paid leave in isolation, the issue is who is going to take care of the baby after, and how much does it cost?” Ms. Olivetti said.

Research on paid leave in California has found that short leaves have a neutral or positive effect on employers, but the effect of long leaves on U.S. employers is unknown. The Gates Foundation serves as an American test case.

A year was too long for several reasons, Mr. Rice said. It was hard for employees to hand off their work for a year. When they returned, the organization had usually changed to the point that re-entry was very time-consuming. And moving people around among the foundation’s 1,600 employees to cover for people on leave left gaps throughout the foundation.

“We’re working hard to manage the balance between how do we make sure we help and support our employees adding to their family, and the impact on running the day-to-day operations of our foundation,” Mr. Rice said.

In the three years that the yearlong leave was offered, 17 percent of employees took advantage, he said. Women were more likely to take it than men, and they also took longer leaves: 77 percent of women took the full year compared with 41 percent of men. Mr. Rice said the foundation analyzed whether it affected the career trajectories of women, who are two-thirds of employees. It did not. The company is adding the $20,000 stipend because child care costs were a concern, he said.

Paid parental leave on its own is not enough to achieve the goals of helping working families and supporting women’s careers, researchers say.

Leave needs to be gender-neutral, they say, and men should be encouraged to take it. The involvement of fathers is important for mothers and babies, and it also helps prevent employment discrimination against women and enables them to return to work sooner.

Parents need support beyond the months immediately following the birth — things like subsidized child care, flexible schedules and sick days that can be used for family members.

Finally, avoiding the pitfalls of taking time off to care for children would require a broader shift in cultural norms, experts say. That’s unlikely to happen until leave-taking is offered to everyone.