WHITE PAPER – Men and Gender Equality in Portugal

Community, Work & Family, 2018

Official Spanish policy seeks greater gender equality by, among other things, encouraging men's use of their legal rights to parental leave and requiring employers to implement equality plans. This article contains a first-ever analysis of the extent to which company equality plans are used to improve upon the legal provisions governing parental leave and whether those improvements actually encourage greater leave use by men, help to degender leave use and promote fathers' co-responsibility for childcare. The improvements implemented by companies are analysed against a backdrop of economic crisis (2007-2016), during which public policy underwent no substantial change. An analysis of the gender equality plans in place among 107 'gender equality employers' (GEEs) revealed that most included no enhancement of the existing legislation and only a few work organizations provided incentives for men to use leaves as part of their work-life balance strategies. Substantial progress in this regard can only be expected through increasing government provision of parental leave aimed at men and/or increasing government pressure on companies to encourage leave taking by men. RESUMEN

RES, 2018

The Nordic welfare states pioneered parental leave arrangements for fathers and not just mothers to care for their young children at home during their first year of life. The parental leave rights for fathers consist of one part that is family based and one part that is individually given to fathers. The article aims to show how these two types of leave have influenced the fathers' experiences and appreciation of parental leave. Findings show that family based parental leave rights given to parents to share seem to enable gender equality, but as there is no pressure on fathers to use them. They are defined as mother's rights and thus they have less positive effects than individual, non-transferrable leave. Individual parental leave rights such as the father's quota is better able to promote gender equality in parental leave use and childcare.

The European Union has been one of the main propellants for gender equality, and has contributed to build awareness amongst its Member States of the difficulties that combining work and family life is for working women. Even in its efforts to come up with a legal framework to battle for women's equality, in 2015, the European average employment rate of women was eleven points lower than men's rate, which was especially accentuated when women had children under the age of six. Estimations of the EU are that the gender employment gap will still be of nine points difference between the sexes by 2055, which is extremely worrying. The present thesis will first analyse the current EU's family leave policies, concretely the Maternity Leave, Recast and Parental Leave Directive, which will serve as a basis to understand the new European Commission's Proposal for a Directive on work-life balance for parents. Such in-depth analysis will help us identify the reasons why the current legal framework on family leave have failed to ensure gender equality in the labour market, and if the new proposal on introduction of paternity leave and improvements on parental leave would help solve or reduce women's misrepresentation and less favourable treatment in employment. Abstract en español Una labor de dos: Revisión del marco legal europeo sobre las bajas por maternidad, paternidad y parental para una efectiva igualdad de sexos en el ámbito laboral La Unión Europea ha sido uno de los mayores propulsores de la igualdad de género en los últimos tiempos, y ha contribuido a tomar consciencia entre sus Estados Miembros sobre las dificultades que significan para las mujeres combinar su trabajo y su vida familiar. A pesar de los muchos esfuerzos realizados para propiciar un marco legal adecuado para combatir la desigualdad que sufren las mujeres, en el 2015, la media europea de personas activas en el sector laboral variaba once puntos entre hombres y mujeres, que se acentúa especialmente cuando las mujeres tienen hijos menores de seis años. Las estimaciones de futuro realizadas en el seno de la UE tampoco son muy esperanzadoras, pues se prevé que en el 2055 la diferencia de la tasa laboral entre hombres y mujeres todavía sea de nueve puntos, lo que es extremadamente preocupante. En la presente tesis, primero expondremos cuál es el actual marco legal europeo en cuanto a las políticas de balance familiar-laboral, en concreto las Directivas de la baja por maternidad de 1995, el texto refundido de la igualdad de género en el trabajo de 2006, y la Directiva de la baja parental de 2010, que nos servirán [IUSLabor] como base para entender y analizar la nueva propuesta de Directiva de la Comisión Europea para un balance de la vida familiar y laboral de los padres. Con dicho examen, pretendemos identificar por qué el anterior marco legal no ha servido para asegurar la igualdad de género en el mercado laboral, y si la nueva propuesta de Directiva será suficiente para abarcar la gravedad del problema.

igualeseintransferibles.org

We will focus our discussion on at-home childcare allowances (which are not compatible with paid work), in particular maternity leave, paternity leave and parental leave. Section 2 will deal with current reform trends in Europe. Section 3 will concentrate on measuring the differential use of leaves between mothers and fathers. We will point out the fact that there are no available indicators and statistics to allow an appropriate follow-up of existing differences. Section 4 will discuss the short, medium and longterm impact both on women involved and on the labour market configuration. We will set up a methodological premise and will state that the effects analysis is also determined by the options taken into account by researchers. We will emphasize that many studies on this subject still find it very difficult to even consider the possibility for men getting involved in housekeeping tasks. Section 5 finally includes the summary and conclusions. Some countries are now implementing non-transferable leaves for fathers, but their duration is still very short. There is also a clear tendency towards increasing transferable parental leaves, which in all countries are taken first and foremost by mothers. In order to ensure that they are equally used by both parents and prevent them from having a negative impact on the sexual division of labour, parental leaves must be nontransferable in the first place. They should also be equal leaves with allowances covering 100% of wage or a similar rate, and finally they should not be too long.

Springer eBooks, 2021

2004

Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation, 2012

Portugal stands out in the European context of work and family relations for not fitting either into a traditional male breadwinner model or into a modern equitable model. Indeed, Portuguese society is characterised both by a high labour-market participation of both men and women and a gender-traditional division of domestic and caring work, where women do the majority of tasks. This paper reports on trends regarding the division of paid and unpaid labour over recent decades in Portugal. Challenging traditional sociological and demographic explanations, the scope of this review is to offer a psycho-social approach to the antecedents and outcomes of this division, as well as the processes individuals and families engage in to deal with multiple roles. Looking at the division of paid and unpaid labour through a gender lens, we conclude that, despite some changes in attitudes and practices, the display of gender roles still shapes both work and family relations in Portugal.

Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Sociologie,vol.XIII, no.1, 2008

The paper discusses the case of paid parental leave within the larger framework of the legislative changes on gender issues in Romania, in the context of joining the European Union. Romania is still a patriarchal society, with a long legacy of dependency on state transfers. However, parental leave might be used by either the mother or the father, conditioned upon previous employment and contribution to the public social insurance fund. In 2007, around one fifth of parents on childcare leave were fathers. Based on secondary analysis, it is argued that fathers usually take the opportunity of receiving state benefits for engaging in informal work to supplement the family budget. The active role in raising the children is still performed by the mothers. Nevertheless, on the long run, the prevalence of the economic reasoning over the perpetuation of gender models might prove beneficial for increasing women’s independence, especially for the ones already in the workforce.

This article uses data from 2008–10 to analyze parental leave policies in twentyone European countries and their influence on men’s behavior. It examines entitlement characteristics, such as nontransferability, duration, payment, compulsory period, and other policies to assess their effect on the proportion of leave men use out of the total parental leave in each country. The findings, which suggest that a large majority of men take nontransferable and highly paid leave, and a small minority take other types, provide the basis for developing the Parental Leave Equality Index (PLEI). PLEI ranks countries by the degree to which parental leave policies reinforce or diminish the gendered division of labor. Results indicate that although Iceland’s parental leave policies do the most to advance gender equity, no country has equal, nontransferable, and wellpaid leave for each parent. This policy arrangement would be a precondition to men’s and women’s equal participation in childcare.

Insights into Regional Development 1(2): 85-98. , 2019

In Portugal and elsewhere in the world, the movement promoting gender equality has known advances and setbacks over the past century. While acknowledging and outlining the major favourable developments, this paper discusses mainly some tendencies in the opposite direction, in particular those that highlight and encourage, from an early age, differences between men and women, usually to the detriment of the latter. Examples in Portugal include the growing genderization of children's toys and books (which in one case has triggered a widely-mediatized polemic in September 2017) and the importance of the colours pink and blue. After childhood, differences persist regarding choice of study, professional activities, salary and domestic responsibilities. In this respect, sociological research in Portugal has observed a backlash in the position of women, in particular as an effect of the financial and economic crisis in the period Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Schouten, M.J. 2019. Undoing gender inequalities: insights from the Portuguese perspective, Insights into Regional Development 1(2): 85-98. https://doi.org/10.9770/ird.2019.1.2(1) JEL Classifications: J00 Additional disciplines (besides field of economics reflected in JEL classifications): sociology. * Parts of this text are spinoffs from research in the framework of the project Time allocation and Technology-A gender approach for the Portuguese context, funded by the FCT (PIHM/2008/37) and FEDER funds through the European Regional Development Fund COMPETE programme. INSIGHTS INTO REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT

2010

2000

Abstract: This research report aims to provide an overview of the key findings from the project 'Employment, Family and Community Activities: a New Balance for Women and Men in Portugal', the object of which was to examine family services. This involved, inter alia, drawing up an accurate picture of the role played by such services in Portugal in relation to job creation, reconciliation of family and working life and also in equal opportunities for women and men in the home, employment and social life in general.

2014