Gender related differences in patterns of employment in Sweden, and the effects of the parental leave in a woman's employment

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Sweden is very often taken as a model when a conversation comes to any gender or equity related question. It is said to be, not without any reason, one of the most if not the most advanced country in the world as far as equality of chances or the cause of women are concerned. Tough, it had long been, as had been the same way all the countries of the world, submitted to a clear segregation concerning the sexual division of labour (except maybe in the very agricultural areas where the situation can be a little bit different). Men were supposed to work in order to bring money to the household whereas the woman's main occupation was to make and to raise kids. The Swedish government has had, since approximately the times of the Second World War of active struggle against that situation and instead been promoting a way more gender balanced model, where both sexes should in the end be seen as equal.
Employment is in this respect a crucial matter. Indeed, it is only by (sometimes self) employment that one can earn the money necessary to have a livable life. As Sweden claims and is said to be a pioneer countries as regards to welfare, it should in consequence have some particularities it could be interesting to study. What are the strategies of the Swedish welfare state that aim particularly to reduce the differences between men and women?

Extraits

[...] I am not going to study all the implications of the economic conditions and of all the features of the labour market that influence women's employment. I will rather try to study the effects of the parental leave on mothers The various effects of the parental leave Short history of the parental leave in Sweden and description of the parental leave in Sweden As we've seen previously, the maternity leave in Sweden took at its very beginning a mandatory form since the women in the industrial field were not allowed to work in the four weeks following the birth of their child, they receive obviously no compensation at all for the time spend non working. [...]

[...] (1987). Mot ett jamstalldt foraldraskap? [Toward equal parenthood?!. Studier for vardutveckling (Vol. 12) [Studies for progress in caregiving]. Ostersund, Sweden: Vardhogskolan Ostersund. [...]

[...] In Sweden, this takes the form of a taxable low flat rate payment during the leave period (Ronsen and Sundström p124). A typical characteristic of the Swedish programme lies in its high degree of flexibility: benefits may be used full-time or part-time or saved and used any time before the child is eight years old. (Ronsen and Sundström p126) Further, Swedish full-time employed parents have had the right since1979 to reduce working hours, if they had wished it. According to Ronsen and Sundström, mothers in Sweden are also encouraged to a close spacing of the births (Ronsen and Sundström p 126-127), since they've had the right since 1980 to maintain the same benefit level as with the previous child without returning to work if they had another birth within 24 months. [...]

[...] This in my opinion accounts for a big part of the so-called failure of the parental leave system to eradicate the inequalities, even if it largely contributed to their reduction, by the amelioration of the conditions of women's return to employment. Indeed, some further research has tried to point out that the parental might in the contrary reinforce women's unequal position in the labour market insofar as they somehow return to less satisfying jobs and tend to earn a little bit more. [...]

[...] What is less marked still exists- in Sweden than in the other industrialized countries is as well that women receive lower hourly wages than do men, even after a host of worker and job are controlled for and that women contribute the majority of household labour and maintain primary responsibility for child-rearing. One great achievement of the Swedish country is the raw rate of women's employment. Between the ages of 20 and of all the Swedish women were employed in 1992 (Gornick p217). [...]