Sweden’s showing us the way with paternity leave

Walking along the streets of Stockholm, the average Brit will see a scene quite alien to them. Groups of men happily wandering around the city’s suburbs, pushing along prams, or with babies strapped to their backs. This is something a Swede will barely bat an eyelid at, but this isn’t a scene you’ll likely to see whilst wandering the streets of Manchester. This may, however, be about to change. The coalition has announced plans to bring in shared maternity and paternity leave by April 2015. So for today’s students, it means that we will be the first generation of Britain’s who will finally have the opportunity of equality in parenting. But disappointingly, it does not go as far as it should, falling far behind Sweden’s system which has been in place since the 1970s. In short, it’s a good start – but not good enough.

Currently the British system gives men just two weeks of paid leave from work following the birth of their child, and they are entitled to no other time off. Women, on the other hand, are given paid leave for up to 39 weeks after birth, and can choose to take up to 52 weeks off in total. Under the coalition’s proposals, mothers will automatically receive 18 weeks’ paid leave, men 2 weeks. The couple will have 32 weeks, of which 16 are paid, to split between them.

So why is this change so important? By giving women so much more paid time off than men, the state has been reinforcing the sexist view of women as primary providers of childcare, with the negative impact this then has on their careers. It isn’t, however, only negative for women. Many men who would love to stay at home with their children don’t because they would have to do so unpaid, which most families cannot afford. Another problem is the general attitudes towards men and childcare. With its parental leave policy, the government had been endorsing the view that men don’t get involved in childcare. It’s seen as emasculating for men to be the ones to stay at home, which puts many men off for fear of how others will perceive them. Under the current system, the government had been effectively endorsing this view.

From 2015, a couple will be able to choose to split leave (pretty much) equally between them, letting them choose for themselves their roles within their own family. Within any partnership, partners must be able to choose between them who would be the best person to look after their children, and that is not a decision in which the genitals that person happens to have should have any bearing. Couples are likely to have more pressing issues on their mind during that decision process, such as the stage each of them is in their career (and so if it’s sensible for either of them to take a large amount of time off), or who would most enjoy spending that time at home with the children.

The problem comes, however, in reserving the first 18 weeks to the woman. It means that the message of women as primary caregivers, though weaker, is still there. The government needs to send the clear message that neither gender is expected to take the majority of childcare. A Swedish friend put it to me perfectly – “I think the biggest theoretical fault with the British system is that it by law says that men and women should be unequal to the law (which I obviously don’t think is acceptable). The biggest practical problem is that it will keep women away from work life and make them a less attractive choice during employment, and they are therefore put in a difficult position when trying to develop successful careers.”

Still a major concern for female students upon graduation is: will a man be chosen for a job over me because of my gender? The story’s a disappointingly familiar one: two candidates, one male, one female, fairly evenly qualified. The employer, (especially so in small businesses) worries that the young woman will start having children within a few years, and doesn’t want to have to bear the cost of the time she’ll likely take off for maternity leave, and so they employ the man instead. The problem with the government’s proposal is that it doesn’t change this perception. If women have so much more time allocated to them, then women will still be seen as a bigger liability. As only 2 weeks is allocated to the man, and stereotypes already favour women looking after children, women will remain disadvantaged.

The Swedish system is a much more sensible model, and what we should be striving for. Parents are given 480 days between them, of which each has 60 reserved for them that the other partner cannot use. This is designed to challenge the stereotype that men aren’t involved in childcare by actively encouraging each parent to take time off to get the maximum time between them, and it means that the state does not in any way discriminate against either parent on gender.

The coalition’s proposals are a step forward. They allow couples to split parental leave between them fairly, a massive improvement on the current system. What they do not do, however, is challenge existing stereotypes of women as primary caregivers to children, or stereotypes that men cannot hold that role. It seems right now, we may still be a while off my own personal dream – seeing groups of men wandering through the streets of Manchester, prams and babies in tow.