Leave policies in challenging times: reviewing the decade 2004–2014

Paternity and parental leave policies across the European Union

“…Although harder to quantify, social norms and workplace cultures play an important role in determining uptake of leave by fathers (Moss & Deven 2015). The organization of leave policies can entrench existing social beliefs about gender roles, and equally employer's attitudes towards fathers reducing work hours to spend time with their family influence the uptake of leave by father.…”

“…A lack of comprehensive and comparable basic statistics stands in the way of an evaluation and understanding of the use and impact of the many different types of leave policy that exist. Resolving this would be the first step in understanding how policy can increase leave uptake by fathers (Moss & Deven 2015).…”

“…The goal of a differentiation between individual and family-based parental leave entitlement is to increase uptake by fathers, because it has repeatedly been shown that parental leave based on a family entitlement (i.e. not tied to the father) is predominantly used by mothers (Moss & Deven 2015). Despite the large number of policy initiatives aimed at increasing fathers' uptake of leave, there is a lack of good quality data on the uptake, primarily because countries do not keep administrative data of leave usage.…”

“…A statutory right to parental leave for fathers is important in order to make it more acceptable in workplace cultures for fathers to use reconciliation policies (Moss & Deven 2015;COWI 2008).…”

Parental Leave in Spain: Use, Motivations and Implications

“…National governments have reacted in very different ways to such demands, although a common trend may be identified in the initiatives appearing in the European Union over the last 25 years. One such common trend, for instance, entails extending the length of leaves (although this parameter is very variable), raising the percentage of the salary paid during leaves and enhancing the flexibility of their use (OECD, 2011;Moss and Deven, 2015). Moreover, fathers' use of such leaves has been fostered, mainstreaming parental leave policies in overall gender equality policy (Haas and Hwang, 2008;O´Brien & Wall, 2017).…”