Kenya's 14 paid days for fathers sit inside a UN tally where mothers receive 196 and fathers 25

Mothers around the world receive an average of 196 days of paid leave after a child is born, and fathers 25, UN Women and the World Bank Group said in a policy brief published on October 22, 2026. The brief covers 190 economies. In Kenya, fathers get 14 days and mothers three months.

The tally behind "nearly eight times"

The policy brief, From Parenthood Leave to Childcare Services, comes from the Women, Business and the Law project of UN Women and the World Bank Group. We could not open the brief on UN Women's own site, so the figures below come from the agency's release as relayed by Mirage News, from UN News and from The Star in Nairobi.

The release says mothers are entitled to "nearly eight times as much paid leave as fathers". The ratio is plain division: 196 days against 25. The spread behind the average is wider than the average itself. In 66 of the 190 economies, fathers are guaranteed no paid leave at all, against six economies for mothers. Of the 124 that do offer fathers paid leave, half offer less than two weeks. The two columns of the ledger are not symmetrical, yet the brief does not pretend that mothers are universally well served: in 61 economies they receive less than the 14 weeks that the International Labour Organization (ILO) sets as its standard.

Recovery from childbirth is the usual reason given for a gap of this size, and the World Bank's own data team has allowed for it. In a blog post of June 18, 2020, it wrote that even after accounting for recovery from pregnancy and childbirth, paid leaves for fathers are in general much shorter than paid leaves for mothers. That earlier count found a median length of five days for fathers against 98 days for mothers.

Kenya: 14 days against three months

Under Section 29 of the Employment Act, a Kenyan mother gets three months of paid leave and a father 14 days, The Star reported on October 27, 2026. The newspaper puts the ratio at nearly seven times. The ILO sets its standard for mothers at 14 weeks, or 98 days.

Seen against the world, the Kenyan father does not come out badly. The Star notes that Kenya appears to do better because 66 economies give fathers no paid leave at all and, of the 124 that do, half give less than two weeks, with five days on average in sub-Saharan Africa. Fourteen days is exactly two weeks, so it clears that line, but only just. The comparison flatters the arrangement and says nothing about the gap that remains.

Kisumu senator and lawyer Tom Ojienda told the paper that the law treats the two parents differently. "Unlike maternity leave, paternity leave is limited to 14 days per year, regardless of the number of children born within that year," he said. A father of twins gets the same 14 days as a father of one. The question has already been to court. In 2023 a petition asked the Employment and Labour Relations Court to declare Section 29 discriminatory because it gives fathers and mothers different leave periods, and the court dismissed it. Ojienda summarised the reasoning this way: the court recognised the unique physical and health-related needs women experience during and after childbirth, and found the variation in leave durations reasonable and constitutionally acceptable.

That reasoning speaks to mothers' recovery. In the paragraph The Star prints, it does not address how long a father's leave should run, which is the other pan of the scale.

What fathers say, and what the evidence can bear

The release says eighty-seven per cent of fathers state that they lack the support they need, and 83% report that their employers do not offer flexible working arrangements. More than 64% would support higher taxes to expand public care services. The release introduces these figures with the words "Recent research shows" and, in the versions we read, gives neither a sample size nor a list of countries. Taken together they describe fathers who want more care time, but the survey behind them is not named.

On what leave does, the brief relies on association. According to UN News, when fathers take leave they share more of the childcare and housework over the longer term, which eases the load on women, who spend on average 2.5 times more hours per day on unpaid care work than men. Paternity leave is also associated with higher earnings and employment for mothers, and one analysis links more responsive fathering to better cognitive functioning, language, emotion regulation and behaviour in children.

The words are "associated" and "links", and the World Bank's 2020 blog is careful about them. It says it is difficult to establish causality, and to know whether the effects are explained by the selection of fathers who take leave. Some designs get closer. According to the same blog, two weeks of paternity leave in Spain increased fathers' involvement in childcare and led to higher labor force participation among mothers. A five-week "daddy quota" in Quebec increased the time mothers spent in paid work.

Law does not make leave taken, either. The blog found that in some Nordic countries only 40% of eligible men use parental leave, and the share can be as low as 2% in countries such as the Czech Republic or Poland.

Put as an account, the claim is simple: the days a father takes are days a mother does not carry alone, and the habit outlasts the leave. Whether it does is the part the evidence supports only in measured terms.

Two English-speaking systems, two ways to count

For readers in the United Kingdom, the gap is written into the statutory rate. Employees can take either one or two weeks of paternity leave, according to gov.uk, and the amount of time is the same even with more than one child. Statutory Paternity Pay is £194.32 a week or 90% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower. Leave must finish within 52 weeks of the birth. How a redesign of that system would be valued is the subject of our brief on a University of Bath report.

In the United States, there is no federal law guaranteeing paid parental leave, NPR reported on October 25, 2026. California is one of 14 states, plus Washington, D.C., with a paid family leave program. California's offers up to eight weeks of paid bonding leave within a year, on top of the six to eight weeks of paid disability leave that mothers get to recover after birth. Men made up 51% of bonding claims in 2025, against about 18% when the program started in 2004. A claim is not a week off, as our brief on the California figures noted.

One of those California fathers, Karlo Campana, told NPR that he took leave after the birth of his son and after the births of his daughters. "My wife isn't doing it on her own," he said. He also said that he initially hesitated: "I felt guilty, for sure," he said, because dads maybe feel they need to be the provider.

Who pays for the extra days

The brief recommends giving fathers their own paid leave that cannot be passed to the mother. It also wants leave paid through government or social insurance schemes instead of by employers, along with simpler application rules and public campaigns to change attitudes. In Kenya, The Star says, that could mean schemes such as the Social Health Authority or the National Social Security Fund.

The proposal moves the bill from the employer to the pool. That settles who is asked to pay, and leaves open who is asked to stay home.

In California, the bill is already paid by workers: the state is among six where family leave is entirely funded by employee payroll deductions, NPR says. Each model answers the question of who pays differently, and none of the pieces we read puts a cost on the Kenyan proposal.

UN Women's deputy executive director, Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, said that "Care sustains our families, societies and economies, yet women continue to shoulder a disproportionate share of it". She added that closing the gap requires policies that "enable and encourage fathers to take on their fair share of care", along with social protection.

The next date is fixed. On October 29, 2026, the International Day of Care and Support, UN Women and the World Bank Group are asking governments to recognise men and boys as caregivers and to promote the equal sharing of care work.

Sources

• UN Women, Fathers get one-eighth of the paid parental leave of mothers (release as relayed by Mirage News), UN Women, October 22, 2026
• Want to celebrate fathers? Let's talk about paternity leave, World Bank Data Blog, Eliana Rubiano-Matulevich, June 18, 2020
• Statutory Paternity Pay and Leave: employer guide, gov.uk