As we launch our campaign calling for mandatory paid maternity leave, Lucie Morris and Anna Saunders report from the parental front line.

Makayla McIntosh's face turns noticeably pale as she recalls the day she reluctantly returned to work, just 12 weeks after having her first child. She was still struggling to get to grips with motherhood. Her new son Edley was waking constantly during the night, thirsty for milk and hungry for attention. So it was with great difficulty that the Toowoomba childcare worker left for work in June last year, as the sound of Edley's plaintive cries rang in her ears.

"It was horrendous," explains Makayla. "I was tired and very emotional, so going back to work again was the last thing I wanted to do. It felt so wrong and against all my instincts as a new mother to leave my child." However, Makayla, 29, didn't have any choice but to leave her son in the care of her mother. Without paid maternity leave, she simply had to return to work to meet her mortgage repayments.

While at work, Makayla frequently wept during moments alone. "I was on my feet most of the time looking after children, and I just didn't want to be there; I just kept worrying about my baby all of the time."

Four weeks after her return to the workplace, Makayla's situation was made all the more distressing when she came home one evening to feed her son, only to discover that her breast milk had dried up. "Edley was crying for food, yet I couldn't feed him - I have never felt such a failure. The doctors did what they could with medication, but it didn't flow again so I had to use formula milk instead," she explains. "There is no doubt the problem was because I had pushed myself too far."

Like two-thirds of all Australian women, Makayla's experience of first-time mother-hood was affected by the fact her employer offered no paid maternity leave. Yet if Makayla and her partner Jason, 33, a distri-bution manager, were living in virtually any other nation in the developed world, their story would be very different.

In Canada, she would receive an incredible 50 weeks paid leave - of which 35 could be taken by either herself or her partner. In Italy, she'd receive 47 weeks, in the UK, 39 weeks, while in Germany and Japan, she would be entitled to 14 weeks of fully paid maternity leave. "I can't even imagine what that must be like," remarks Makayla. "I had no idea other countries are so generous. Even having just six weeks paid leave would have helped enormously with our finances and given me more time at home.''

In fact, Australia and the US are the only countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-ordination and Development (OECD) that do not have universal paid maternity schemes - and this is despite the Australian government encouraging us to have more children. The UK government recently increased its state-funded maternity leave from six to nearly 10 months. Meanwhile, countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia ensure that women receive income while they are caring for their new babies. In Australia, employers are not obliged to pay anything once a pregnant worker goes on maternity leave. And it is this continued lack of support for new mothers that has sparked protests.

Female politicians, women's groups and now marie claire are lobbying to make it a key issue at this year's federal election. We all make the same point: the government's $4133 "baby bonus" is not enough financial support, and mothers are in desperate need of paid maternity leave in line with global standards.

Change is greatly needed, argues mother of six, Justine Caines, founder of lobby group What Women Want. She believes Australian mothers are being neglected and undervalued. "It's terrible that women are being forced to be parted from their newborn babies simply because they can't afford to stay at home. The consequences for mothers, babies and families as a whole are endless. It just doesn't make sense when the government says it wants more women to have children to increase the population," she reasons.

Leading social policy researcher Julia Perry agrees, adding, "In 1940s Australia, married men were regarded as breadwinners while married women were expected to be full-time homemakers and child rearers. But today, women are expected to take their place in the labour force, but are not compensated for the fact that they also have the role of child bearing. When women have ˛ children they are suddenly thrown back into the role of dependent spouses."

Perry also argues that when women like Makayla take unpaid maternity leave, it can precipitate a financial crisis. "For families with moderate incomes and high mortgage repayments, that crisis can be so severe it could mean having to choose between continuing with a pregnancy or continuing with a home purchase," she warns.

In Australia, receiving paid maternity leave is a case of the luck of the draw. Currently, only a third of working women are entitled to it - mostly in the public, education and health sectors, while some larger companies, such as Telstra, Westpac, American Express and bigger law firms, also offer their own plans.

One of the most generous is Macquarie University's award-winning scheme, which includes 26 weeks paid parental leave plus an additional four weeks paid leave for the partner at the time of birth. Such employers report that more of their female employees return to work. Westpac is a case in point: when they introduced 12 weeks paid maternity leave, the return-to-work rate increased to 70 per cent, saving the company millions each year in recruitment costs. It's a key point as Australia currently has the lowest rate of women returning to work after giving birth in the OECD.

Makayla discovered her employer offered no paid maternity leave when she fell pregnant in August 2005. When she became ill after a few months, Makayla felt she had little choice but to resign. "It was very depressing," she says. "I couldn't work any longer because I felt so ill, but there was no financial support. The fact that I had worked so hard for the company and looked after 25 children every day with just one assistant counted for nothing."

Like Makayla, Julianne Dalgleish, a construction manager from Sydney, wishes she was in the one third of Australian women who receive paid maternity leave. When she discovered in May last year that she was pregnant following IVF treatment, her employer did not share her joy. "He asked me if I was sure what I was doing," claims the 41-year-old. "Then, he gave me work which I wasn't qualified for and called me names like ‘baby brain' over the office loudspeaker. It was horrendous. I was the only woman in a company of 30 men and I was made to feel like I was committing a crime by being pregnant."

Because Julianne was a contractor for the company, they told her she was not entitled to any paid - or unpaid - maternity leave, and sacked her when she was four and half months pregnant. "I know I could have taken them to court, but I just couldn't face the stress," she explains. "I just wanted to concentrate on keeping healthy for my much wanted baby."

When her daughter, Kiri, was born by caesarean section, there was little time to enjoy first-time motherhood with her partner Darryn, 43, a construction rigger. Without paid maternity leave, or a job to return to, Julianne was attending interviews within six weeks of giving birth. "I just didn't have a choice," she recalls. "Our mortgage was just too big."

While Julianne prepares to leave her baby to return to the workplace, Australian women are at the mercy of their employers as to whether they will receive paid maternity leave or not. As the law stands, private companies have to fund paid maternity leave themselves, without government assistance, unlike most other nations in the OECD. For Mission Australia, a charity that employs 3500 people - 70 per cent of whom are women - their recent decision to bring in nine weeks of maternity pay was a "moral choice". In total, their female employees give birth to 40-100 babies every year, so it wasn't a flippant decision, according to CEO Toby Hall.

"My view is that we believe passionately about family and children and we should be reflecting that," he enthuses. "Being a mother is one of the most important jobs in Australia and we care about our staff. We also value the contribution they have made in the past."
The organisation says it has carefully budgeted for the costs of the new scheme, which will cost $200,000-$700,000 every year. When the news of the maternity pay was announced by the charity in April, it was an emotional moment for many of its female employees. "As silly as it sounds, I cried at my desk when I found out that we were getting it," says Tabitha Feher, a business development manager, who is due to give birth next month. "It will make an incredible ˛ difference to my family. But the money aside, it was more about the validation I felt from my workplace. This is a massive victory."
However, other businesses contacted by marie claire report they simply can't afford to pay maternity leave without government funding, despite wanting to support female staff.

Anita Ziemer, the managing director of Slade Group, a recruitment firm with 80 staff, says the cost of offering the recommended 14 weeks paid maternity leave sought by women's groups would "cripple" the company. "The cost to a small business is phenomenal, but, personally, I hope we can do something to help," she insists. "Women are the only ones who have to have babies - men don't even have to consider stepping out of the workforce. I just have to make it viable for my business without it crippling us."
Tony Steven, the CEO of the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia, agrees, "At the end of the day, business is a commercial operation not a social agency. Maternity leave and paternity leave have little to do with productivity and if it's forced on small businesses it will kill them."

However, there are plenty of global models that prove paid leave does not have to adversely affect small businesses when aided by government. The British government, for example, refunds employers up to 104 per cent of the leave in the case of smaller firms.

Matthew Knowles of the UK's Federation of Small Businesses says the British system works well for companies. The only minor drawback, he reports, is that forms are often complicated and time-consuming. "If your government can learn from the success and mistakes of our [system], then both employers and employees should be on to a winner."
So what is being called for? The issue of paid maternity leave is a battle that has been fought for many years, and by two women in particular. In May 2002, Natasha Stott Despoja, Democrats senator for South Australia, introduced a private member's bill to bring in a national scheme of 14 weeks government-funded maternity leave. Although the bill failed to be voted on, its sentiments were echoed the same year in a report by now NSW Liberal MP Pru Goward in her former role as federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner. She called for 14 weeks pay, up to the minimum wage, and calculated that the net cost to the taxpayer would be around $213 million a year - a drop in the ocean considering the recent federal budget reported a surplus of nearly $11 billion. Broken down, this would roughly translate to a maximum payment of around $7500, compared to the current baby bonus of $4133.

Women's groups, employees and MPs welcomed Ms Goward's recommendations. However, Prime Minister John Howard claims small businesses would suffer, saying, "It's important we don't make a mistake of think-ing that there's a one-size-fits-all approach."

Although the baby bonus scheme, which was introduced in July 2004 and is due to rise to $5000 in 2008, currently offsets some of the costs for new mums, it doesn't solve the issue of paid maternity leave. "It was a start but it wasn't enough to compensate women having to leave their jobs to have a baby, and did not take into account women's differing incomes," says Senator Stott Despoja. "The government has ducked the maternity pay issue for too long now and I'm furious that we still lag behind the rest of the world."

At the time of going to press, Treasurer Peter Costello announced a host of childcare tax breaks, while Labor leader Kevin Rudd revealed a pre-election policy of giving parents the right to 24 months unpaid parental leave. Mr Rudd, however, had not made a firm decision about whether a Labor government would introduce paid maternity leave. "I don't want to say things which may not happen," he told marie claire. "But we are looking at this very carefully. We are seriously behind world standards on the issue."
However, political posturing matters little to Makayla, who still finds it hard to leave her son each morning, as she gets ready to go to work at a private childcare centre. Plans for a second child are firmly on hold until the family can save enough money, so, for now, a sibling for their son seems a long way off.

"The really ironic thing is that I now have to pay someone to care for my baby, while I spend my day working to look after other mothers' babies who have also been forced to return to work," muses Makayla. "And the reality is we all just want to be at home where we belong at this stage of our lives. Is that really too much to ask for?"

PAID MATERNITY LEAVE: IT'S LONG OVERDUE.

JOIN OUR CALL FOR CHANGE!

If you want to support marie claire's campaign calling for government-funded paid maternity leave, join our protest rally on Thursday, June 14 at 12.30pm in Martin Place, between Castlereagh and Pitt Streets, Sydney.

Speakers will include marie claire editor Jackie Frank, Nova 96.9 presenter Bianca Dye, Democrats senator Natasha Stott Despoja, NSW Minister for Women, Verity Firth, and Mission Australia CEO Toby Hall.

For more information or to register your support, please click here.