The most investigated and documented dimension of leave and diversity is the difference between men and women. Especially the institutional design of parental leave schemes and related gender consequences have been inves-tigated. This includes consequences for men’s and women’s eligibility, take-up and compensation for leave, life-earnings, sharing of informal care, and career and labour market opportunities.
Parental leave may be a means of fostering gender equality and, as such, features as a measure on the EU policy agenda, in particular to enable men and women to reconcile their employment and family responsibilities.
Given this context, the gender issue is understandably to the fore in the EU’s approach to leave policy. The Parental Leave Directive, therefore, requires that a minimum of three months of parental leave should be an in-dividual entitlement for both male and female workers, granted on a non-transferable basis.
Despite the increasing strategies and policies for gender equality on supra-national, national and local levels and within the workplace, the changes in social practices are, however, less evident in terms of sharing the care re-sponsibilities. Parental leave is undeniably an important element in the achievement of the adult worker model where both mother and father par-ticipate on the labour market, but many existing parental leave schemes have been criticised as being merely “extended forms of maternity leave, heightening economic inequalities between men and women and reinforcing traditional gender roles” (Wilkinson et al, 1997, p. 83).
3.1.1. Institutional characteristics and gendered take-up
There is general agreement that individual rights, high compensation rates, and a family-friendly work environment are crucial elements for the crea-tion of a gender-equal division of paid and unpaid work between men and women (Bruning andand Plantenga, 1999; Rostgaard, 2002; Haas, 2003).
Unpaid or low paid leave is unlikely to attract many fathers, as they, more often than the mothers, have the highest earnings in the family, being the main breadwinner. We know on the economic front that the unequal take-up of parental leave adversely affects women’s career and employment oppor-tunities, their pension savings and their rights to other social benefits (Mor-gan and Zippel, 2003; Pylkkänen and Smith, 2003). On the care front, we also have evidence of the importance of the early childhood years for the bonding between parents and child, and of why it is of great importance that fathers also have the opportunity to spend time with their child in this period (Lamb, 1981). But despite the EU directive on parental leave and the current EU aim of becoming the world’s most competitive and knowledge-based economy, the national diversity on the policy implementation of the leave schemes reflect that there are still major differences in constructions and beliefs about gender, parenthood and childhood.
29 3.1.2. Parental leave and care models
The EU Parental Leave Directive should ensure that the eligibility criterion for leave is gender neutral, by guaranteeing a non-transferable individual right to leave. Nevertheless, analysed from the perspective of how govern-ment parental policies give parents the opportunity to be released from work to care, Haas (2003) finds considerable differences among the EU countries in terms of gender consequences. Using different models of care, she em-phasises how parental leave may contribute to the development of a gen-dered care model. In the Non-Interventionist Model, the government inter-venes minimally and care responsibility is considered a private (female) matter (Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain). In the Family-Centred Model, there is a strong commitment to the preservation of the traditional family and long leave periods should ensure that women can undertake care work and employment sequentially (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany). In the Market-Oriented Care Model (Ireland, the Netherlands and UK), employers are encouraged to provide leave for parents who are in employment. Finally, in the Valued Care Model (Finland, Denmark and Sweden), parental leave is used to promote the ‘valued care’ norm, where care is a joint private-public responsibility, offering families financial compensation for parental leave and access to affordable, high quality care services. The choice between caring and working is consequently available for both men and women.
3.1.3. Data on gendered effect
Despite these characteristic differences of the institutional design of parental leaves and related care benefits, we do, however, know too little about the gendered effects in terms of take-up. The different models are likely to prompt a differently gendered use of the leave schemes, but we have no re-liant data to refer to when we compare countries. Only in the Nordic coun-tries are there regular, consistent statistical accounts of the use of leave, ac-cording to gender, and occasionally also acac-cording to occupation and educa-tion of the parent: for example, in Sweden in 2002, men took 16% of the parental leave days available, and one in five of the persons taking leave to care for a sick child was a man. In most other countries, however, data on take-up of parental leave is irregular and inconsistent. Statistical information from large-scale European surveys seems still to differentiate mainly be-tween categories of ‘employed’ and ‘unemployed’, overlooking other cate-gories of economic (in)activity which do not fit. However, from 2005, the European Labour Force Survey will focus on the reconciliation of work and
family life in the ad hoc module and will measure the take-up of parental leave.
Statistics are, however, still mostly shaped by the labour market focus of employment of parents, e.g. in only documenting the aggregate periods of leave for the whole labour force. From the point of view of the child, statis-tics are also required which can show how the individual child is cared for in the early months and years, whether it is the father, mother or even a grandparent that takes leave from work in order to care and for how long.