Swedish Dads
A project encouraging men and women to share their parental leave more equally.
In spite having one of the world's most generous parental leave systems in the world, only a fraction of Sweden’s fathers use all their days of parental leave. In fact, only fourteen per cent of parents choose to share their allocated days equally. The current system enables parents to stay at home with their child for a total of 480 days, while receiving an allowance from the state. Ninety of these days are allotted to each parent. The purpose of this allocation is to promote gender equality. In order to encourage men and women to share their parental leave more equally, a so-called ‘equality bonus’ has also been introduced. The more days divided equally between parents, the higher the bonus. There are two aims to this project. The first is to describe the background to Sweden’s unique parental allowance. The second is to inspire other fathers – in Sweden, and further afield – to consider the positive benefits of such a system.