The impact of paternity leave mandates on women's employment in the OECD countries

Abstract

Women's Labour Force Participation Rates in the OECD countries are still much lower than men's. Literature attributes this persistent gap to the \motherhood penalty". Family leave policies tried to reduce this gap, but extended leaves seem to have backfired as they fueled a gender specialization between paid and unpaid work. Many countries introduced father-specific leave entitlements with the purpose of increasing their involvement in household labour and foster women employment. This paper studies the effect of paternity leave policies on female employment rates in 31 OECD countries. This analysis exploits the fact that each country introduced this policy in different years to estimate a difference-in-differences model. We find that paternity leave policies are associated with a 4.9% increase in female Labour Force Participation Rate. This result suggests that father-specific leave policies fulfilled the promise of fostering gender equality in the labour market.