Paid Family and medical Leave

Employees should have access to time away to care for personal health, bond with a new child, or care for a family member. Paid family leave should include language that is expansive around the definition of family, including but not limited to adoption, surrogacy, and becoming foster parents. This leave should be comprehensive enough to reflect the wide range of personal and family caregiving needs. 

Employers providing comprehensive paid family and medical leave promotes the sharing of caretaking roles and equality in relationships. Traditional gender roles call for women to be primary caretakers thus requiring and setting the expectation that women should either take time away from work, delay career advancements, or quit their jobs all together. This can leave women in a financially insecure position of depending on a partner for income.  Women are left with the decision to care for themselves and their loved ones or forego a paycheck.  Paid leave allows women and parents to care for themselves without fear of losing their jobs.

Paid medical leave should also be made available to part-time employees and intermittent workers. Paid leave that includes employees of all types of employment are rooted in equity as those who are often left out of these policies are often paid less and disproportionately filled by women, people of color, and immigrants [1].

“Just 15 percent of workers have access to paid leave to care for their own long-term illness or the long-term illness of a child [2].”

  • Wage replacement is the percent of an employee’s salary that they receive during their leave. It should be at a high enough rate that employees can afford to take the time off that they need without worry. Along with sufficiently and adequately meeting wage needs, the amount of leave should also provide enough time off for workers to care of themselves and/or loved ones.

  • Financing paid leave policies should be funded in ways that offer consistency for employees so that it is always available and does not shift depending on yearly organizational budgets.

  • Employees should be able to take leave without worrying about their continued employment. Anti-retaliation ensures that employees do not receive pay reduction, firing, or a demotion as a result of taking paid leave. People should return to work with the same or equivalent job.

  1. National Partnership for Women & Families. (2018, August). Paid family and medical leave: A racial justice issue – and opportunity [Issue brief]. https://nationalpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/paid-family-and-medical-leave-racial-justice-issue-and-opportunity.pdf  

  2. Family Forward NC®. (2025, March). Guide to family forward workplaces.  https://familyforwardnc.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Guide-to-Family-Forward-Workplaces_2025.pdf