New maternity leave scheme aims to correct gender imbalance

Monash University is to begin offering maternity leave grants to encourage academics to return to their careers.

Believed to be the first of its kind offered by an Australian University, the initiative, dubbed 'Populate or Perish', will offer Faculty of Science academics returning from maternity leave a $AUD15,000 grant to assist in their research.

The grant can be used for any research-related purpose and it is hoped that it will encourage women to return to postgraduate education, currently suffering a decline in numbers compared to undergraduate courses.

Prof Margaret Clayton, convenor of the Monash University's Faculty of Science equity committee, said that women were seriously under-represented in the faculty's academic staff. She said the grant scheme and other initiatives were designed to address the gender imbalance.

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) has given its blessing to the scheme.

"The union sees initiatives like this as one of a number of successful strategies to retain women in higher education and particularly women in science, and to help women balance work and family," said NTEU president Carolyn Allport. "The grant will provide the facilities to catch up quickly and to compete in the next round of science grants."

Allport said the NTEU had been pursuing the issue of maternity leave over the past year and had won a positive response from enterprise bargaining agreement discussions with universities.

When discussions recommence, Allport and her team will put on the table a maternity leave proposal that would give women 14 weeks' leave on full pay, with the remainder of the 12 months on 60 per cent (or possibly lower) pay, one year unpaid and the facility to mix and match the leave with their partners, if they were at the same institution.