ALONG with its Nordic neighbours,
Sweden features near the top of most gender-equality rankings. The World
Economic Forum rates it as having one of the narrowest gender gaps in
the world.
跟它的北欧邻国们一样，瑞典在性别平等榜单上名列前茅。世界经济论坛将它评为世界上性别差异最小的国家之一。
But Sweden is not only a good place to be a woman: it also appears to be an idyll（田园生活）
for new dads
. Close to 90% of Swedish fathers take paternity leave.
Last year some 340,000 dads took a total of 12m days' leave, equivalent
to about seven weeks each. Women
take even more leave days to spend time
with their children, but the gap is shrinking. Why do Swedish dads take
so much time off work to raise their children
?
Forty years ago Sweden became the first country in the world to
introduce a gender-neutral paid parental-leave allowance. Benefits
comprised 90% of wages for 180 days per child, and parents were free to
divvy up the days between them in whatever way they pleased. But the
policy was hardly a hit with dads: in the scheme's first year men took
only 0.5% of all paid parental leave.
Today they take a quarter
of it. One reason is that the scheme has
become more generous, with the number of paid leave days for the first
child being bumped up from 180 to 480. But it has also been tweaked to
encourage a more equal sharing of the allowance
. In 1995 the first
so-called "daddy month" was introduced. Under this reform, families in
which each parent took at least one month of leave received an
additional month to add to their total allowance. The policy was
expanded in 2002 so that if the mother and father each took at least two
months' leave, the family would get two extra months. Some politicians
now want to go further, proposing that the current system of shared
leave be turned into one of individual entitlements, under which mothers
should be allowed to take only half of the family's allowance, with the
rest reserved for fathers.
Policies similar to the Swedish "daddy months" have been introduced
in other countries. Germany amended its parental leave scheme in 2007
along Swedish lines, and within two years the share of fathers who took
paid leave jumped from 3% to over 20%. One of the most powerful
arguments in favour of splitting parental leave more equally is that it
has positive ripple effects for women. Since Swedish men started to take
more responsibility for child rearing, women have seen both their
incomes and levels of self-reported happiness increase. Paying dads to
change nappies and hang out at playgrounds seems to benefit the whole
family.