Same-sex parental leave : Legislation and equality

Sweden is known to have one of the world's most generous parental insurances, both inlength and flexibility which has led to a high maternity rate and more women in paidwork. The political work on equality in Sweden has the goal that women and men shallhave the same power to shape society and their own lives. This has led to legislationaimed at getting fathers to stay more at home with their children. There has been plenty ofresearch on this subject so this study goes off the main track and looks at how legislationaround parenthood works for same-sex couples and if paternal leave is shared moreequally between same-sex parents than heterosexual parents. Discourse analysis of thelegislation and a survey with same-sex families followed by interviews indicate that samesexcouples share parental leave more equally than heterosexual couples. Legislationworks well for most same-sex families except for the process of related adoption. Reasonsfor more equal sharing of parental leave is hard to find but could depend on the fact thatsame-sex couples have been couples for a longer time, than heterosexual couples, beforedeciding to have children. Wage gap between men and women is a reason whyheterosexual couples do not share equally and it could be vice versa for same-sex couples