In 2015, when then Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced an additional week of paid leave for fathers during a National Day Rally speech, he jested, “Do not go and play golf, please use it to take care of your kid”.
The problem persists. New research reveals that the number of days of paid paternity leave across 21 Asian jurisdictions is just 6.9 per cent of paid maternity leave available to mothers
Maternity leave is common place in many jurisdictions around the world – the United States being a notable exception. By comparison, paid paternity leave lags. Famous dads who take leave still make headlines – Britain’s Prince Harry and Eikei Suzuki, former governor of Japan’s Mie Prefecture. Even countries with generous leave for fathers – Japan being one of the most generous in Asia, offering 14 weeks of paid maternity leave, four weeks of paid paternity leave and one year of paid leave that can be shared by mothers and fathers – still struggle to encourage dads to take leave.
As we move out of a week of celebrating International Women’s Day, we must keep the spotlight on what is holding women back. The massive gap between the number of days of paid leave available for mothers (called maternity leave in most jurisdictions) when compared to fathers (paternity leave) remains a major driver of inequality.
Based on new research which I have published at the University of Technology Sydney, the average number of days of paid leave for mothers across 21 Asian jurisdictions is 106 days. This figure shadows the mere 7.3 days of paid paternity leave available on average across the region for fathers. Paid paternity leave in the 21 countries is just 6.9 per cent of the paid leave available to mothers. A surprising seven countries across the region offer no paid paternity leave whatsoever.
A more equal sharing of responsibility for childcare between parents is pivotal.
Adding to this problematic picture is the refusal of many Asian nations to acknowledge the same-sex marriages or same-sex partnerships within which children are born or adopted. In some instances, a birth mother in a same-sex female couple may be able to access paid maternity leave while one father in a same-sex male partnership may be able to access adoption leave allocated for fathers. Yet a clear point of discrimination exists in the extent to which parents in same-sex unions are able to enjoy access to paid leave in terms that equal different-sex couples.
Australia’s International Gender Equality Strategy, released last month, has clear priorities for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade related to women’s economic equality and locally led pathways to leadership. A more equal sharing of responsibility for childcare between parents is pivotal to achieve both. This new data points to clear areas where Australia should be advocating for legislative reform across the region.
Yet the strategy’s implementation also requires a bit of humility. Australia was a late-comer to both maternity leave and paternity leave. Amendments introduced in mid-2023 attempted to move away from the idea that mothers are primary carers by allowing parents to decide between them how they will use their allocated leave. However, the 22 weeks of transferable pay available as of July 2024 (154 days) may do little to challenge the pregnancy-parenting continuum that often sees mothers continue to care after giving birth. By contrast, as of 1 January 2021, Spain offers 16 weeks of paid leave for each partner in two-parent families and the leave is not transferable between them. If it is not taken, the leave is lost.
Moreover, the 22 weeks of paid leave in Australia, which is legislated to rise to 26 weeks or 182 days, by July 2026, falls short when we look at the generosity of other jurisdictions. Unsurprisingly, Nordic nations lead, including Sweden which offers 240 days of paid leave for each parent, of which 90 days cannot be transferred, while Iceland, which describes the rights of each parent as “independent rights”, offers six months, or 183 days for each parent.
Australia is also less generous than some of our neighbours. While their gaps between paid maternity leave and paternity leave are not models we want to follow, Pakistan and Vietnam are already more generous than Australia’s current leave provisions, the former offering 180 days of paid maternity leave alongside 30 days of paid paternity leave, the latter 183 days of maternity leave alongside five days of paternity leave. Yet even these countries, more generous than Australia, are far from the gold standard of perceiving caring responsibilities in truly equal terms.
Law reform alone will not guarantee that legal entitlements will be used when available. Traditional constructions of fatherhood and masculinity remain deeply engrained in many countries. But clearly, dads and partners want to care.
Governments across Asia also have plenty of reason to reform their models: declining birth rates, growing elderly populations and notable gender gaps in workforce participation. It is only with generous, easily accessible and non-transferable leave allocated specifically to fathers and partners that we will see a more equal sharing of the responsibility for care that will be essential to shift towards a more gender equal region in the years to come.
This commentary is based on research published in Vijeyarasa R (2025), “Misdirected by the ‘daddy quota’: A comparative study of paid parental leave across twenty-one Asian nations,” Asian Journal of Comparative Law 1-21.https://doi.org/10.1017/asjcl.2025.5