The full-time pay equivalent is 16.8 weeks of paid leave. All parents have the right to paid leave – including the unemployed and students – while new employees and the self-employed are entitled to 80% of their salary. Slovenian mothers get 15 weeks of leave and they're paid the equivalent of their full former salary. Despite these transformations, the U.S. is the only country among 41 nations that does not mandate any paid leave for new parents, according to data compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and current as of April 2018. Yet the gains registered have so far failed to resolve the fundamental problem experienced by most, if not all working women at some point in their professional lives: unequal treatment in employment due to their reproductive role. This would be 15.7 weeks if they were fully-paid. In Costa Rica, which is not an OECD member country, mothers are guaranteed 17.3 weeks of fully-paid maternity leave. In Australia, federal legislation stipulates that a woman must inform her employer that she is pregnant and will be taking time off at least ten weeks before leaving. In countries which provide cash benefits through social security, the ILO standard says that a woman should be paid at a rate of not less than two-thirds of her previous insured earnings, with full health benefits. When Australia passed a parental leave law in 2010, it left the U.S. as the only industrialized nation not to mandate paid leave for mothers of newborns. This Northern European country provides 16 weeks of maternity leave at a pay rate of 80%. Israel had the highest birth rate out of any OECD country in 2016, according to the Times of Israel. Instead, they leave it up to employers. A number of countries – Bulgaria, Hungary, Japan, Lithuania, Austria, Slovakia, Latvia, Norway and Slovenia – offer over a year’s worth of paid leave as well. Netflix, for example, offers employees a full year of paid time off after the birth of their child, according Business Insider. (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax Around the world, the number of weeks allowed for maternity leave and the percentage of pay varies by country. Some countries pay mothers the same amount as the. In Spain, for example, 18,000 public school teachers in the Basque region receive 18 weeks maternity leave, two more than mandated by law, and 12,000 private school teachers in the same region receive 17 weeks. * up to a ceiling ** voluntary insurance available. Mexico assures its new mothers 12 weeks of maternity leave at a 100% pay rate. In the United States, discrimination is prohibited against pregnant women, women at childbirth and women who are affected by a related medical condition, but only in companies with 15 or more workers. While paid maternity leave has become standard in most industrialized countries, progress has not been uniform. Those 18 weeks break down to four weeks before the birth and 14 weeks after, according to Business Insider. Belgium, France, Gabon, Luxembourg and Spain have set up special systems to protect self-employed women during maternity.