Dismantling Restrictive Gender Norms: Can Better Designed Paternal Leave Policies Help?

Abstract

Despite global commitments and efforts, women's equality, particularly at work, has still not been fully realized. Here, we examine whether improved parental leave policies, implemented at the national level, that encourage fathers to participate in caregiving can be effective at reducing unequal gender norms surrounding work. We use data from 1995–2018 that are nationally representative for nine countries, and employ a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the effect that changing parental leave policies has on attitudes towards women's work. Our results indicate that changes to parental leave policy that incentivize or encourage fathers to take time off are associated with improvements in attitudes towards women's equality in the workplace. Specifically, we find that incentives for paternal leave stimulates egalitarian changes in attitudes among both men and women. Our study is the first to longitudinally investigate whether parental leave policies can influence gender equitable norms and our findings support the notion that egalitarian changes in policy can improve gender norms.