If you want to attract, retain, and promote women to top leadership positions, then one possible approach is to have a robust paternity leave or “secondary care giver” policy. Why? When women or “primary care givers” get more leave than the “secondary care givers”, the primary care givers don’t feel that they can actually take all their leave without suffering a career backlash. Additionally, equitable care giver policies allow duties to be distributed more evenly between perceived “primary and secondary” care givers.

Inc recently released a study of 20,000 publicly traded companies across 91 countries. “Research showed that mandated maternity leave did not correlate to increased female leadership, but more robust paternity leave did (emphasis added). …If you have a supportive set of policies, which would include paternal leave, which allows women to have children while maintaining their careers in a relatively undisruptive manner, you see more women making it to the very top.” Science says 30% more women in top management equals 15% more profitability.

If the future possibility of more profit doesn’t promote action, you must show firm shareholders how robust care giver policies have a strategic and direct impact to their bottom line today. It’s costly to lose talent and recruiting talent isn’t exactly inexpensive. By now we’ve all seen the studies showing how diverse teams are more profitable (here’s just one example in case you missed the memo), and the next generation of attorneys (both internal and clients) have values that require firms to change. If we as leaders say we are committed to the success of everyone, yet fail to enable even simple changes, then we aren’t leading. We’re following.