Twitter Announces 20 Weeks Paid Parental Leave for Employees

Twitter is about to start granting both male and female employees 20 weeks paid parental leave, according to an interview between Twitter and Fortune.

The gender-neutral policy will start on May 1st and appears to be the bidding of Twitter’s diversity department and their continued attempts at diversifying both the platform and their workforce.

“The goal of this change was to expand how we think about parental leave,” said the platform’s Vice President of Inclusion and Diversity Jeffrey Siminoff. “Primary caregiving is something that’s hard to define.”

“We’re a very watched industry because of the products and services we offer,” he continued. “We want to lead by example and by doing so we can influence the decisions of others.”

It’s a move that has become commonplace among Silicon Valley tech companies, with notable industry leaders such as Facebook and Netflix already boasting the perk. Twitter already has a 20 weeks policy for maternity leave, but it’s the first time that the company will have the same rule for their male counterparts.

Twitter’s diversification has been noticeably accelerating recently, with new diversity announcements and changes being made almost monthly. In November it was revealed that three white male board members at Twitter would be leaving after new diversity measures, and the company recently formed a safety council in order to police and, if need be, purge the platform of “offensive” speech, particularly against minorities.

The company has also paved the way in leading other tech businesses into similar action, with software organisation Dropbox announcing in February that they would be further diversifying their workforce. Open-source hosting service GitHub’s diversity “social impact team” was also revealed in February after it was discovered that an anti-white agenda was being pushed by leading figures in the unit.

According to the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, mothers of newborn babies are entitled up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave, but further company perks exist on a business-to-business basis.

Charlie Nash is a frequent contributor to Breitbart Tech and former editor of the Squid Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington.