CEO of Twitter, Parag Agrawal has announced that he’ll be taking paternity leave for “a few weeks” as he is expecting his second child. Agrawal is married to Vineeta Agrawal. She is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm. This new announcement has opened many eyes to the concept of paternity leaves as the corporate world only used to give maternity leaves to women(also very few companies provide maternity leaves till now). Paternity leave still has been a taboo in society and these baby steps by appealing personalities are going to be a good start in tackling the patriarchal society.
The CEO is getting the best responses from Twitter users ever since the announcement. People are not shying away from supporting paternity leave on Twitter. Here are some of the positive tweets taking a stand for paternity leave.
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal goes on few weeks of paternity leave. Good to know that Twitter provides up to 20 weeks of parental leave, irrespective of gender.
It’s not easy to go on few weeks of leave at his level, but he knows very well what’s his priority at the moment. https://t.co/UA6yWb2K1a
— Manas Muduli🇮🇳 (@manas_muduli) February 17, 2022
Twitter CEO @paraga takes Parental leave, sets an example.
It’s normal for a parent to need a break from work for baby care.
It’s Abnormal for companies still not ready about men taking this leave and women still sacrificing their career for it.
Normalise #parentalleave— Shalini Sharma (@shaliniharnot) February 17, 2022
Strong stigmas remain – in workplaces and society as a whole – around men taking #ParentalLeave.
As we continue to fight for policy change at the federal level, we applaud prominent leaders for setting an example for all men to follow 👏 https://t.co/9u6WQVFYfR
— Dove Men+Care (@DoveMenCare) February 17, 2022
Along with many people Anushka Sharma, an Indian actress, also praises Parag for his rightful decision. She says “About time this will normalized!”. Since this is not the first time an Indian personality has taken paternity leave. Virat Kohli, an Indian cricketer of Team India also husband of Anushka Sharma, has also taken paternity leave from cricket. Although, this hasn’t really impressed the Indian fans at that time.
Twitter CEO #Parag #Agrawal goes on paternity leave, CFO Ned #Segal praises him https://t.co/bhaMIid1Dw pic.twitter.com/fcwQQT2Dxs
— Jenkers News (ENG) (@jenkers_en) February 17, 2022
According to Twitter policy, the company provides 20 weeks of parental leaves for the employees. This has made people question the CEO for the “few weeks” leave. The co-founder and executive chairperson of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, suggested taking a leave for as much he needed.
Take the time you need @paraga — it doesn't have to all be at once — you can split #ParentalLeave up, like take a few weeks to make sure everything at home is AOK, then take every Friday off to use the rest of the leave. You'll always be a text message away! https://t.co/4P9E8OYXb1
— Alexis Ohanian 🇦🇲 (@alexisohanian) February 16, 2022
We believe it’s high time that we should all break this taboo together. A child deserves the love and attention of both parents instead of just giving responsibility to the mother. While maternity leaves are considered typical in India, we are racing behind for paternity leaves. Many countries have taken steps to give full paid parental leaves to both the parents like Finland and Sweden.