Cite as: 538 U. S. 721 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
Congress also heard testimony that "[p]arental leave for fathers . . . is rare. Even . . . [w]here child-care leave policies do exist, men, both in the public and private sectors, receive notoriously discriminatory treatment in their requests for such leave." Joint Hearing 147 (Washington Council of Lawyers) (emphasis added). Many States offered women extended "maternity" leave that far exceeded the typical 4-to 8-week period of physical disability due to pregnancy and childbirth,4 but very few States granted men a parallel benefit: Fifteen States provided women up to one year of extended maternity leave, while only four provided men with the same. M. Lord & M. King, The State Reference Guide to Work-Family Programs for State Employees 30 (1991). This and other differential leave policies were not attributable to any differential physical needs of men and women, but rather to the pervasive sex-role stereotype that caring for family members is women's work.5
Standards of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 99th Cong., 2d Sess., 33 (1986) (hereinafter Joint Hearing) (statement of Meryl Frank, Director of the Yale Bush Center Infant Care Leave Project). See also id., at 29-30.
4 See, e. g., id., at 16 (six weeks is the medically recommended pregnancy disability leave period); H. R. Rep. No. 101-28, pt. 1, p. 30 (1989) (referring to Pregnancy Discrimination Act legislative history establishing four to eight weeks as the medical recovery period for a normal childbirth).
5 For example, state employers' collective-bargaining agreements often granted extended "maternity" leave of six months to a year to women only. Gerald McEntee, President of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, testified that "the vast majority of our contracts, even though we look upon them with great pride, really cover essentially maternity leave, and not paternity leave." The Parental and Medical Leave Act of 1987: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Children, Family, Drugs and Alcoholism of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, 100th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 1, p. 385 (1987) (hereinafter 1987 Senate Labor Hearings). In addition, state leave laws often specified that catchall leave-without-pay provisions could be used for extended maternity leave, but did not authorize such leave for paternity purposes. See, e. g., Family and Medical Leave Act of 1987: Joint Hearing before the House Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, 100th Cong.,
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