Who should cover women’s maternity leave? Private companies, the state, or both?

In Costa Rica, maternity leave has traditionally been a shared responsibility, but has often been criticized as harming women’s employment prospects, as employers can be reluctant to take on the extra costs in the event a woman gets pregnant. And firing a pregnant woman in Costa Rica is against the law, precisely to prevent discrimination.

A bill was recently introduced by Mario Redondo of the Christian Democratic Alliance Party (PADC, its initials in Spanish), to change the way maternity leave is covered in the country.

Redondo proposes that the state public health system, run by the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS), cover the full cost of maternity leave, instead of having it be a cost shared between employers and the state.

He argued that this bill will aid in combating labor discrimination experienced by women, since companies sometimes prefer not to hire women who they think might get pregnant or who are already pregnant in order to avoid paying maternity leave costs.

Currently the CCSS and the employer contribute equally to cover a woman’s salary for the month prior to childbirth, and for three months after delivery.

“We are proposing a project that makes it simpler and more viable for employers in the private sector to hire women,” said Redondo to the Legislative Plenary, a proposal he made within the framework of the Commemoration of International Women’s Day.

In addition to having the CCSS assume the full cost of maternity leave, the bill stipulates that women on leave are required to maintain their same level of state health insurance contributions throughout the leave period.

Redondo said that according to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INEC), since 1996, when the maternity leave code was last reformed, the birth rate has dropped from 2.7 children per woman to 1.7 in 2015.