Sharing Parental Leave between Mothers and Fathers : Experimental Evidence from a MessagingIntervention in Uruguay

Parental leave has been increasingly used as a family policy to facilitate balancing care andwork responsibilities and promoting gender equality. However, fathers' parental leave participation is stilllow, even when it offers both job and wage protection. This paper examines the effects of an information andawareness-raising intervention, delivered via email and text messages on men’s and women’s awareness and intentions ofshared take-up of a parental leave program. The experiment provided recent and prospective parents meeting the socialsecurity requirements to benefit from parental leave with information about the program. Additionally, a subset ofrecent parents received messages that told them about (i) the benefits of fathers’ involvement in childcare, or (ii)the importance of planning parental childcare. The intervention was successful in increasing knowledge aboutthe parental leave program and shifting traditional gender norm views among women, regarding father’s involvement andcare planning. For men, knowledge about the program increased. However, the strong association between parentalleave and breastfeeding led to fathers privileging mothers’ use of the leave benefit. The findings show limited impacton actual leave taking, with the message about couples’ leave planning increasing the effective use of parentalleave among fathers compared to the information message. The results show that low-cost, targeted informationinterventions can have substantial effects on program knowledge among potential future beneficiaries. Althoughthese interventions can support more equal gender roles and change gendered attitudes toward care responsibilities, theyare not sufficient to shift behaviors.