Parental leave in Sweden Tomas B Lindahl Vice chair MÄN Photographer Johan Bävman

The situation in Sweden 40 years of parental insurance in Sweden Today; 480 days of parental leave for each child. 240 days for each parent. 90 days reserved for each parent since Jan 1 2016. These 90 days cannot be transferred to the other parent. The remaining 300 days one parent can transfer to the other. 390 of the 480 days are paid to sick leave level (about 80% of salary). The days can be claimed up to the child´s age of 12. (since 2014). In Sweden, an Inquiry will conduct a review of the rules for parental leave and parental insurance. The review is to be presented on Dec 20. 1995 the first ”father month”, when 30 days ewere reserved for the father, and could not be tranferred. Uttag av vab-dagar, fördelat på kön 2013 Kvinnor: 63,4 % Män: 36,3 % 2015 var det 38 procent.

Division between men and women Men in Sweden claim only one fifth of the parental leave days during the first two years of the child. In 2015, 26 percent of all parental leave days were claimed by men, 74 percent by women. About 25 percent of the fathers does not claim any parental leave at all. The Swedish Social Insurance Agency has shown that both women and men are more likely to do a greater part of the household and care work and to work less after having completed parental leave if they claim a larger proportion of the parental leave. Lägga till att män vabbar också mindre. Women claim three quarters of parental benefit days and also carry out the majority of unpaid work in the home. They work part-time more often, have poorer career development, take more sick leave, and their pensions are 30 per cent lower than men's pensions. Women claim longer periods of parental leave, which means that women take the majority of the responsability during the first year of the child. Women claim, on average, parental leave on a full and part-time basis for 15.3 months during the child's first two years of life. Men's total parental leave is an average of 3.8 months, and they spend 66 days, or 2.2 months, of the parental insurance days.

What needs to be done? MÄN advocate that the parental leave in Sweden needs to change into an individual non-transferable leave. The associate professor Anne Boschini from the Finance department, claims in the new report ”Different gender, different pay”, that individual non-transferable parental leave is one of the most important measures for women and men to gain equal pay. If nothing is done, it will take at least 20 more years before men and women claim at least 40 percent each of parental leave and childcare. It will take 150 years before women and men will have equal pensions in Sweden, according to a new report. The report writers also brings up individual parental leave as key. A review of parental insurance The purpose is to identify problems and propose measures so that parental insurance can contribute to a greater extent to gender equality in the labour market and gender-equal parenting and can keep contributing to good conditions for children to grow up in. PENSIONS: The explanation is found in how work life looks. The pension is based on life income and women earn less than men. Many women work part-time, are more sick leave than men, and often take a greater share of parental leave. Then they also slip behind.If the gap is to decrease in less time, decisions in the labor market are required - something that may not be easy:"The men should take a greater part of the parental insurance. You can go so far as to split it into two parts so the men have to take half, otherwise it will burn. Inspection for social insurance Strong signal.