IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-3-319-41513-0_8.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Social Investment or Gender Equality? Aims, Instruments, and Outcomes of Parental Leave Regulations in Germany and Sweden

In: Gender and Family in European Economic Policy

Author

Listed:
  • Diana Auth

    (University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld)

  • Hanne Martinek

    (Uppsala University)

Abstract

In this article, parental leave reforms in two different welfare states and care regimes, Sweden and Germany, are compared in the context of varying paradigms: social investment and gender equality. Starting with theorizing these two approaches, we have developed an analytical framework of the overlaps and differences between them. Thereafter, we empirically analyse paid parental leave reforms since the turn of the millennium: the first, in Sweden, which is the prototype of a two-earner/carer model, and then in Germany, a (modernized) male breadwinner model. While gender equality aims dominate Swedish parental leave politics, the social investment strategy is more prominent within German policy debates. The actual design of policy instruments, however, shows less clear differences as the parental leave policies are influenced by a mixture of the two paradigms in both countries. In our conclusion, we interpret our empirical findings with regard to social policy traditions and trajectories.

Suggested Citation

  • Diana Auth & Hanne Martinek, 2017. "Social Investment or Gender Equality? Aims, Instruments, and Outcomes of Parental Leave Regulations in Germany and Sweden," Springer Books, in: Diana Auth & Jutta Hergenhan & Barbara Holland-Cunz (ed.), Gender and Family in European Economic Policy, chapter 0, pages 153-176, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-319-41513-0_8
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-41513-0_8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-319-41513-0_8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.