DETERMINANTS OF PATERNITY LEAVE IN MALAWI PUBLIC SERVICE

Abstract

The paper highlights that despite paternity leave missing in the legal and policy documents in Malawi, there are variations in uptake and implementation within public sector institutions. Being a developed countries’ concept in its orientation, some developing countries and other public sector institutions see pursuance of paternity leave as an important gender-justice debate. This mixed-method’s study utilized rational choice and gender theoretical frameworks. A population of 1,138 working fathers (those with their own biological or adopted children) was targeted across five purposively sampled institutions namely: Chancellor College, Southern Region Water Board, Office of the Ombudsman, Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Parliament of Malawi. Forty-five (45) systematically sampled non-paternity leave takers, eight (8) paternity leave takers and eight (8) human resource officers were sampled for the study. Primary data was therefore collected using semi-structured self-administered questionnaires. The analysis revealed that the legal and policy frameworks decrease paternity leave uptake by not being clear on leave duration, pay arrangements, and provision of awareness. Socio-economically, there are income inequalities (measured using the Gini Index and Lorenz Curve) that indicate that officers on lower cadres did not see the importance of paternity leave. However, paternity leave promoted family bonding, and workplace productivity. However, low paternity leave uptake was amongst many reasons, challenged by selective policy administration and pre-occupation of officers.