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Introduction
In many European countries various aspects of family policy have recently
been used as policy instruments to attain desired goals. In particular,
parental leave has been in focus, and there are numerous examples of
reforms of benefit levels and rights to leave. The Nordic countries are often
seen as forerunners here, not just in generosity but in earmarking part of
the leave to each parent with the goal of gender-equal use. In Finland,
Iceland, Norway and Sweden part of the leave can be used exclusively by
the father (Moss 2014). The reserved part of the leave in Sweden was
introduced with distinctive goals of not just gender-equal use, but also to
encourage gender equality both in the division of household work and in
the labor market. This study focuses on whether the more extensive goals
of increased gender equality have been reached though reserving days in
the Swedish parental leave system.
In Sweden, since the introduction of the present system in 1974, parents
have been able to share parental leave between them as they prefer, and
the system is with few exceptions gender-neutral in giving the same rights
to fathers and mothers. The leave was, not surprisingly, used mainly by
mothers, and a long political and public debate eventually lead to the
earmarking of days (Cedstrand 2011). In 1995 one month was reserved for
fathers and one for mothers; these months being forfeited if not used by
the designated parent (Duvander and Johansson 2012). In 2002 another
month was reserved for each parent and the leave was also extended to
today’s 16 months of leave.
Reform evaluation is a growing field but it is often difficult to perform with
convincing methodology. Primarily, it is difficult to isolate an effect from a
reform from other processes in society, such as for example economic
cycles and demographic processes. Potential effects from reforms also have
to be measured over an extended period of time, and it is easy to draw too
hasty conclusions by following the potentially affected individuals for too
short observation periods. In addition, the politically stated goal with a
reform is often abstract and vague, such as “increasing gender equality”
or “improving families’ choice capacities”. Obviously, such goals need to be
operationalized to be evaluated, but this also often means narrowing them
down to something less than the political ambitions.
The most direct way of evaluating these reforms is to analyze how days of
leave are shared before and after reforms. This has undoubtedly lead to the
conclusion that the reforms have been successful, as fathers’ leave days
increased by both reforms (Ekberg et al. 2013; Duvander and Johansson
2012). However, we are in this study interested in whether the reforms
also influenced other, less directly related, areas of gender equality. There
was at the time political hope that the reforms would lead to a more
gender-equal share of household work and to a strengthening of women’s
position in the labor market. This study attempts to capture the long term