Fathers on parental leave: an analysis of rights and take-up in 29 countries

ABSTRACT

Using information published in 2014 annual review of the International Network on Leave Policies and Research, the article analyses parental leave and benefit policies in 29 countries to identify which characteristics can potentially facilitate fathers’ take-up of parental leave. The scarce statistics that is available shows that only few countries have been successful in increasing fathers’ participation in the parental leaves, despite the fact that some recent policy schemes seem to have drawn lessons from the Nordic success. There are several countries which indeed have adopted principles similar to the Nordic countries in their leave schemes, such as fathers’ quota, generous income-related benefit or long duration of the leave. The evidence suggests that only taking over some elements of the successful policy schemes does not necessarily lead to a change in the leave-taking behaviour of fathers and families. The evidence shows reasonably high take-up of parental leave only in countries where there is a combination of fathers’ quota and high level of benefit. There is still no evidence to confirm that replicating the fathers’ quota in its Nordic designs other societies would generate similar behavioural change as it did in the Nordic countries.

RÉSUMÉ

A partir d’informations publiées dans la revue annuelle de 2014 de l’ International Network on Leave Policies and Research, cet article étudie les politique de congés parentaux dans 29 pays afin de déterminer quelles caractéristiques peuvent faciliter la prise du congé parental par les pères. Les statistiques disponibles nous montrent que peu de pays ont réussi à augmenter la participation des pères au congé parental, malgré que certains pays aient pu tirer des leçons de l’expérience des pays nordiques. En effet, pusieurs pays ont adopté des principes semblables aux pays nordiques, comme le congé réservé au père et non transférable à la mère (quota du père), des prestations relativement généreuses ou un congé plus long. Les données indiquent que le fait de reprendre certains éléments de ces politiques à succès des pays nordiques ne se traduit pas nécessairement par un changement dans les comportements des pères et des familles. Les données indiquent que la prise du congé parental par les pères augmente uniquement dans les pays qui combinent à la fois un congé non transférable et un haut niveau de prestations. Ainsi, le fait de simplement mettre en place un congé réservé aux pères ne semble pas suffire pour obtenir le changement de comportement observé dans les pays nordiques.

KEYWORDS:

• Parental leave
• fathers
• take-up
• gender equality

MOTS CLÉS:

• congé parental
• pères
• prise du congé
• égalité entre les genres

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Marre Karu is a senior analyst of labour and social policy at Praxis Center for Policy Studies in Estonia. She was in a post-doctoral position at the University of Québec (Téluq) in 2014–2015 for this research. She has graduated from the University of Tartu with Ph.D. She is national correspondent for European Commission Network of Experts on Gender Equality and a member of International Network on Leave Policy and Research. Her research concentrates on gender equality aspects of social and labour policies. Her work has appeared in Studies of Transition States and Societies and Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research.

Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay is a full professor at the University of Québec (Téluq), Director of the CURA Center on work-life articulation over the life course and Canada Research Chair on the Socio-organizational Challenges of the Knowledge Economy. She is member of the International Network on Leave Policy and Research and her research focuses on work-family policies, parental leave, work organization and women’s employment situations. She has published in various journals, including Industrial Relations, Review of Social Economy, Journal of Workplace Innovation, New Technology, Work and Employment, etc.

Notes

1 One exception is Canada which belongs to this group due to a long duration of leave taken up by fathers (13 weeks in 2011).

2 Compared with data from OECD data on national average wage (2013); ILO data on average wage was used for Iceland (2013), Lithuania (2013) and Croatia (2012).

3 Since in Quebec the paternity leave is exceptionally long (3–5 weeks) and with high take-up, it is included in the comparison. Own calculations using data from http://www.cgap.gouv.qc.ca/publications/pdf/Rapport_portrait_prestataires_RQAP-2012.pdf

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.