Comparative social policy analysis of parental leave policies through the lens of the capability approach

This chapter analyses public parental leave in five pairs of European countries and assesses its opportunity potential to facilitate equal parental involvement and employment, focusing on gender and income opportunity gaps. It draws on Sen's capability approach and Weber's ideal-types to comparative policy analysis. It offers the ideal parental leave design, one which minimizes the policy-generated gender and class inequality in parents' opportunities to share parenting while working, thus providing real opportunities for different groups of individuals to achieve valued functionings as parents. Five policy indicators are created using benchmarking and graphical analysis and two sources of opportunity inequality are considered: the leave system as the opportunity and constraint structure and the socio-economic contexts as the conversion factors. The chapter produces a comprehensive overview of national leave policies, visually presenting leave policy across ten European countries. It demonstrates that leave systems in countries from the same welfare regime can diverge in the degree to which they create real opportunities for parents and children as well as in key policy dimensions through which these opportunities are created.