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Wessel van den Berg, at right, advocates for gender equality globally.

Wessel van den Berg is the Senior Advocacy Officer at Equimundo, supporting Equimundo’s advocacy goals around the world, and convening the MenCare Global Campaign et Initiative mondiale pour l'enfance. Wessel, who is based in Cape Town, reflects on South Africa’s recent changes to parental leave laws which, at first glance, might look like a victory, but could further entrench gender-based inequalities – failing to recognize that men, too, must care.

What would it mean if taking time off work to care for a newborn was as normal for fathers as it is for mothers? Women would have more freedom to return to paid work, yes. But more profoundly, it would shift the story of what society values most: financial provision, or human care and connection.

When care becomes everyone’s responsibility, we move beyond stereotypes of “mothers at work” versus “breadwinning men.” We begin to see all workers as people who both earn and care. When care becomes a new normal for all people, including men, it shifts the story we tell about how everyone should behave.

Last week, South Africa’s Constitutional Court ruled that the country’s parental leave laws are unconstitutional. At first glance, this looks like a victory for equality. Fathers, long excluded from meaningful parental leave, now have a legal foothold. Yet the ruling risks reinforcing old inequalities if Parliament does not go further.

Currently, mothers in South Africa receive four months of paid maternity leave (at 66 percent of wages), while all other parents – including fathers and same-sex partners – get just 10 days. The 2020 law that created this arrangement was an improvement: it recognized adoptive parents, used gender-neutral language, and renamed the 10 days as “parental leave” rather than “family responsibility leave.” But fathers were still left with little more than a symbolic gesture. 

After the ruling, the way parental leave is organised still feeds the gendered expectation and core assumption that women are the default caregivers in the world, and that men are the default providers. This identification of men-as-provider is societally strong, and is something that continuously shows up in Equimundo’s research as a key identifier of being a man. 

Equimundo 2025 State of American Men report found that 86 percent of men felt that being a provider meant manhood: this included a pressure to provide economically. Men facing financial strain were more than 16 times more likely to report suicidal thoughts. The  2023 State of the World’s Fathers report found that men all over the world felt responsible for providing financial care.

VIDEO: Wessel speaks on the recent law change.

Perhaps this core assumption that men are breadwinners and women are caregivers is why it took so long for someone to notice that there was an issue of inequality at play when it comes to the differences in parental leave for both parents.

At Equimundo we know that equitable distribution of care work and men’s full investment in the care economy is critical in the fight to end gender inequality. In 2011, we co-founded the MenCare Campaign: a global initiative promoting men’s involvement as equitable, nonviolent fathers and caregivers to promote gender equality. 

In the lawsuit which led to the new ruling in South Africa, the Van Wyk couple, both high-income professionals, challenged the disparity between parental leave between parents. They argued that the father should receive meaningful leave so the mother could return to running her business. Their case reached the Constitutional Court, which upheld the principle of equal treatment.

But the interim solution is inadequate. The court suggested that the four months of leave currently reserved for mothers could now be shared between both parents. On paper, this looks fair: a mother could take three months and the father one. In practice, it is unlikely to work.

The 2023 State of the World’s Fathers report shows that “shared-leave-only” models fail to get men involved. Without a non-transferable entitlement – “use it or lose it” – most fathers stay at work, while women continue to absorb both care and paid responsibilities, playing out the gendered stereotypes around care work our work highlights exist across the globe. 

Worse, a shared model cuts directly into the precious time mothers need to recover from childbirth, breastfeed, and bond with their infants. It treats parental leave as a zero-sum game, pitting one parent’s needs against the other’s. In doing so, it undermines women’s rights, children’s rights, and the very purpose of parental leave: to protect health, nurture attachment, and share care more equally.

This model is especially ill-suited to South Africa. First, women here are already the main breadwinners. Le État des Pères de l'Afrique du Sud report, produced by Tataokhona in partnership with Equimundo as part of the MenCare Global Campaign, showed that women cover far more of children’s expenses than men. Second, most children do not live with their biological fathers – particularly in lower-income households. In fact, the percentage of children who do not live with their biological fathers is the lowest-ever recorded at just more than 35 percent of children. Expecting separated parents to negotiate shared leave is unrealistic, much as child maintenance negotiations so often prove fraught and unreliable. In practice, this system will benefit wealthy, cohabiting couples like the Van Wyks, but fail the vast majority of families.

The good news is that there is still time to get this right. The Constitutional Court has given Parliament until 2028 to design a new parental leave law. That is a short deadline, but it is also a rare opportunity.

The solution is clear. As progressive leave frameworks like the MenCare Parental Leave Platform show,  a fair parental leave system must guarantee sufficient leave for pregnant and breastfeeding parents, alongside a protected, non-transferable portion for each co-parent, like the models offered in Allemagne,  Espagne, et Suède. A small additional pool of shared leave could provide flexibility, but the foundation must be equal, individual entitlements. This design protects mothers’ recovery, secures fathers’ involvement, and levels the playing field in the workplace – where employers expect all parents, not just women, to take leave.

The Constitutional Court ruling in South Africa is historic. This is the most generous leave to be offered to fathers in Africa so far. But if Parliament simply codifies a shared-leave model, South Africa risks entrenching inequality under the guise of progress. True equality requires more. It means recognizing that men, too, must care – and that women are more than caregivers.

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