During the winter of 2022, the number of paternity leaves increased and, despite its relative insignificance (barely 1%), it reveals an underlying problem: more than 1,000 fathers took leave during the World Cup. football world.
The study, signed by Libertad González (Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Barcelona School of Economics), Luis Guirola (Bank of Spain) and Laura Hospido (Banco de España, CEMFI and IZA), uses Spanish administrative data to compare whether the use of paternity and maternity leave varies in the case of a sporting event such as the Football World Cup. The conclusion is yes.
Under the title “Use of parents’ time during paternity leave: childcare or leisure? The investigation analyzes parental leave during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which took place between November 20 and December 18 of the same year, and shows that there was a daily surplus of more than 1,000 men benefiting from parental leave (1.3%). ) relative to surrounding dates (before or after) and the year before and after.
The rebound during the football championship is seen neither in periods of maternity leave nor in the case of independent parents, who already benefit from more flexible schedules. With this conclusion, the authors translate the results “as direct evidence that at least a fraction of fathers use paternity leave for purposes unrelated to child care.”
The authors raise the possibility that recent paternity leave policies (equalizing weeks) have failed to “break traditional gender norms that dictate that women are the primary caregivers.” This, beyond the specific case of the World Cup, is reflected in the use of paternity and maternity leave: while women generally take leave immediately after having the child, men divide their right to leave in several periods which are distributed during the first year. of the child’s life, sometimes part-time and with particular incidence during the summer months, when the care task is generally shared and interspersed with leisure.
In this sense, the paper concludes that “paternity leave cannot lead to gender equality in the distribution of childcare serviceseven in the first months of a child’s life” and highlights the need for “additional policies” that alleviate traditional gender differences within the household.
