Affluent democratic countries have created and expanded paid parental leave for fathers since the 1970s, but policies have developed along different timelines and trajectories. Traditional explanations of cross-national policy variation emphasize social democratic parties and trade unions. Yet, research on more recent family policy reforms suggest alternative political actors or party competition as sources. While extensive research and theorizing have been done, quantitative tests examining sources of family policies are surprisingly rare. Expanding Rights in an Age of Retrenchment: Women, Social Movements, and the Politics of Family Leave (ERA) takes advantage of newly available, country-level, longitudinal data to apply event history methods to cross-national comparative analysis. The project addresses two main questions: Why did some countries adopt parental leave policies faster than others? And why have some countries adopted more inclusive family leave policies while others have not?
The project’s research aims are especially urgent within the current European political context. Early this year, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union adopted a directive on Work-life Balance for Parents and Carers to encourage men and women to engage equally in family responsibilities. Previous studies that offer policy recommendations rarely provide a roadmap for achieving such policies politically. This project makes a unique societal contribution by examining the political and socio-economic conditions under which governments adopt gender egalitarian family policies. Suggesting political opportunities for policy reforms can guide efforts of earner-carer family policy advocates and inform approaches by EU-level agencies and representatives.
ERA pursued objectives related to contributions to research and the researcher’s career development. Research-oriented objectives were to (1) link social movement outcome and comparative welfare state theories, two bodies of research that seek to explain policy development but are insufficiently integrated, (2) bring qualitative and quantitative research on policy development in closer communication to inform data collection and analysis, (3) apply quantitative event history methods, that are common in research on U.S. social movements, to comparative policy analysis, and (4) establish the first cross-national historical compilation of leave rights adoption, facilitating future research in this area and related fields. Career development objectives were to (5) build the researcher’s language and research method skills, (6) create opportunities for hands-on grant-writing skills, and (7) provide the researcher with additional experience in communicating research to diverse, non-academic audiences.
