Julie C. Suk addressed a timeless issue in her article Are Gender Stereotypes Bad for Women?—namely, whether American women would be better served if the United States, following the example of every other industrialized country, offered a paid maternity leave. More evidence exists than perhaps Suk is aware of that bundling maternity leave with medical leave has made enactment of paid leave more difficult in the United States.
Suk's diagnosis seems correct: Old-time sameness feminism may well have jeopardized the ability of advocates in the United States to realize universal paid maternity leave. Her proposed cure is less convincing: that we should abandon our focus on gender stereotypes, and on antidiscrimination law. In this short piece, I will try to ensure that disagreements about how to handle the three short months of maternity leave do not undercut our ability to protect women's jobs during the nearly twenty years they spend in childrearing.
