Sharing statutory maternity or adoption leave
[ch 9: pages 318-319](For simplicity, this part of the text refers to “the mother” and “she”, but shared adoption rights are available to both men and women).
A woman has the right to take the full 52 weeks of statutory maternity or adoption leave, but the only leave she is required to take (if she has given birth) is the compulsory maternity leave element (the first two weeks, or four weeks if she works in a factory).
Instead of taking the full 52 weeks, the woman can choose to share 50 weeks of her leave with her partner, by opting into the shared parental leave (SPL) regime. Likewise an adopter can decide to end their adoption leave and opt into SPL after two weeks of leave.
It would be sexual orientation discrimination to offer better shared parental leave terms to heterosexual than to single-sex couples.