Parental Leave and Gender Equality: Lessons from the European Union

Abstract

This article describes the development of European Union parental leave policy and its impact on mothers' and fathers' access to parental leave in the individual nations that make up the union. Cross-national variations in parental leave policy are described and analyzed. Although the 15 countries belonging to the EU in 2002 are concerned about helping working parents reconcile employment and family responsibilities, so far, only one-Sweden-has begun to develop a parental leave policy likely to facilitate men's and women's sharing of responsibility for breadwinning and child care.

Measuring policy entitlements at the micro-level: maternity and parental leave in Europe

“…This approach has several advantages over traditional comparative analysis of maternity and parental leave which either used datasets such as those mentioned earlier in the paper (Gauthier, 2011;Gornick, Meyers and Ross, 1997), simply reviewed the individual designs (Haas, 2003;Wall & Escobedo, 2013) or empirically assessed similarities through various indices (Boca & Wetzels, 2007;Ray, Gornick, & Schmitt, 2010). Such approaches necessarily lead to a reduction of within country variation.…”

Consequences of Family Policies on Childbearing Behavior: Effects or Artifacts?

“…Much of the present debate on the parentalleave system in Sweden focuses on the perceived low uptake of the leave by fathers (Haas andHwang 1999, Sundström andDuvander 2002). Swedish fathers nowadays do take close to 20 percent of all parental leave Table 1), which is considerably higher than in any other country, but Swedish authorities have seen the previously slow progress towards increased paternal involvement in the parental-leave scheme as being an obstacle to gender equality.…”

Fathers on Leave Alone in Switzerland: Agents of Social Change?

“…Research shows that leave entitlements that are universal, individual, nontransferable, and with high earnings compensation increase men's uptake rates (Haas 2003 ;Haas and Rostgaard 2011 ;Moss 2008 ;O'Brien 2009 ). Except for paid paternity leave, which guarantees job security and salary payment, leave comes at a price in Switzerland.…”