Homemaker or breadwinner? A cross-sectional analysis of parental leave policies and their impact on gender role attitudes across European countries.

Despite the widespread increase in female labour force participation, gender role attitudes towards the gendered division of labour remain diversified with stark variations across Europe. Given the significance of parental leave policies in shaping the division of labour between parents, this study examines how parental leave policies influence the formation of gender role attitudes across Europe. Drawing on time series, cross-sectional data from the European Value Study (EVS), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) family database, I study the effects of three parental leave design dimensions, (1) duration, (2) compensation, and (3) flexibility across countries and across time (1990-2017). The results suggest that an increase in the duration of parental leave for fathers as well as a flexible parental leave design that allows parents to split the parental leave have both a strong and positive effect on the formation of egalitarian gender role attitudes. However, an increase in the duration of parental leave for mothers carries a negative effect on the formation of egalitarian gender role attitudes. Further, this study points towards a new emerging cleavage across European countries with some moving further towards a dual-earner model and others reversing the egalitarian advancements and resorting to a more traditional gendered division of labour. The broad perspective on cross-country differences as well as the usage of new evidence on gender role attitudes gives new insights on the debate over the relationship between macro-level policies and their impact through policy feedback on micro-level gender role attitudes.