What is Social Protection?

Maternity benefits

“Maternity protection offers numerous benefits. It contributes to the health and well-being of mothers and their babies and thus to the achievement of major development goals (…) By safeguarding women’s employment and income security during and after maternity, maternity protection also promotes and achieves effective gender equality at work. (…) An increasing number of countries are also implementing measures to support both mothers’ and fathers’ care responsibilities, such as paternity, parental and adoption leave, as well as services and facilities to enable nursing and childcare.”

See also: Paternity benefits

Source: ILO. 2014. "Maternity and paternity at work: Law and practice across the world". Geneva: International Labour Office. <https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_242615.pdf>. Accessed 16 June 2020.