✓ To new dads two weeks' leave (full salary)

Full salary for 20 weeks for mothers and two weeks of leave, always at full salary, to fathers (even for fathers not united in marriage with the mothers of their children). Yesterday in Strasbourg, MEPs approved a legislative proposal that could be the first step to help working mothers who, across Europe, are discriminated against and penalized at work when they are absent for maternity leave.

Fortunately, in Del Paese the weeks of leave are already 20 (in other European countries they are 14), so the news for us would be essentially these two: the full salary for mothers (now you are entitled to 80% and only some categories have 100%) and two weeks for fathers (always at full salary).

Furthermore, the EU text also provides for rules to prevent dismissal of women from the beginning of pregnancy until at least the sixth month after the end of maternity leave. And again: mothers must be able to return to their job or an equivalent post with the same salary, professional category and responsibilities as before the leave.

Sacrosanct rights, which until now remain intentions. Del Paesene working mothers know this well. Unfortunately, the figures speak for themselves: one in three women working is forced to leave their jobs after her first child.

In fact, the economist Daniela Del Boca, head of the Turin Child center, comments: "The real change would be to be able to involve fathers more. They have to take leave when the children are small, as mothers do. If a man is absent after giving birth, the working woman will be less discriminated and blackmailed. two weeks proposed by the European Parliament seem very few to me. The only positive factor is the economic one: 100% remuneration ".