No, there's no evidence that paid maternity leaves harm women's wages or career progression. Uniformly across the world, paid maternity leaves correlate strongly with more gender equality in the workforce, including in pay and career progression.
In general, in countries with good parental leave policies, it is forbidden to discriminate against parents for taking them. The returning worker is entitled by law to return at the place he/she would have been assuming he/she had worked continuously.
Your comment is like saying that outlawing murder makes more murders happen. It takes a whole lot of motivated reasoning to make that leap.
> In general, in countries with good parental leave policies, it is forbidden to discriminate against parents for taking them. The returning worker is entitled by law to return at the place he/she would have been assuming he/she had worked continuously.
This assumes that the only form of discrimination happening is delaying raises and promotions during maternity leave. The articles linked aren't addressing that; they're about whether the expectation that women may take long paid leave encourages people to preferentially hire and promote men, who won't (be able to) take similar leave. This isn't explicit, actionable discrimination against returning mothers, it's a hard-to-prove worsening of the glass ceiling to save money on leave.
And no, that problem doesn't make maternity leave a bad thing, it means that we should craft policies carefully to avoid worsening discrimination. But I think it's reasonable to say that a policy isn't obviously desirable if common and well-regarded versions of it may worsen gender inequality.
At the very least, it's worth asking whether there are improvements which could be made to avoid that problem while getting comparable benefits, and in this case there probably are.
The claim wasn't that all paid maternity leave harms women's wages. The claim was that _long_ maternity leave _may_ harm women's wages or career progression in Nordic countries.
Please avoid 'hot takes' and read the article listed yourself.
In general, in countries with good parental leave policies, it is forbidden to discriminate against parents for taking them. The returning worker is entitled by law to return at the place he/she would have been assuming he/she had worked continuously.
Your comment is like saying that outlawing murder makes more murders happen. It takes a whole lot of motivated reasoning to make that leap.