PLENT Basics

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We aim to achieve real equality through equal and non transferable parental leave.

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For real gender equality

In order to achieve real gender equality, parental leave should be for each parent: equal, non-transferable and fully paid.

  • It’s the way to involve fathers in children care in the same way as women.
  • It’s the way of taking women’s leave out of employer’s equations.
  • It’s the way to help families having the children they desire.
  • It’s the way

Breaking traditional roles is needed in order to live in a fairer society.

Equal and non-transferable parental leave is a real utopia- A VIDEO by Janet Gornick (City University of New York)

This post is the first of a series that we want to produce regularly in order to present useful information, opinions, and data about Equal, Non-transferable and Fully Paid Parental Leave. This first post intends to present a video with an interview to Janet Gornick, Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, which was presented at the Third European Conference on Equal and Non-Transferable Parental Leave organized in June 2012 by PIINA, the Spanish PLENT partner (Third European Debate).

Janet Gornick regularly undertakes comparative research on parental leave systems and on its consequences for gender equality and for the balance of employment and family life. After all the studies undertaken, she proposes to redesign parental leave systems with the objective to eliminate and to prevent the enlargement of transferable leaves and to implement the same individual right to a well paid and non-transferable parental leave for all people, for fathers and mothers alike. In the video Janet Gornick explains that transferable leaves are mostly taken up by mothers and why this is so. Then she comments on the Icelandic and Norwegian reforms, which increased the time of their non-transferable parental leaves and therewith increased rapidly and substantially the take-up rates of fathers. Finally, she justifies her proposal to introduce a sixth months’ long non-transferable, well paid and individual leave. See part I and II of the video at the Youtube site of PPIINA (Part I and Part II).

To know more on Gornick’s latest comparative studies on parental leave systems and designs see Janet Gornick’s publications and in particular her co-authored article on Assessing generosity and gender equality in parental leave policy designs in 21 countries 2010, and her co-authored chapter of the book Gender Equality: Transforming Family Divisions of Labor 2009, which is an updated version of her most influential and classic article Welfare Regimes in Relation to Paid Work and Care 2003.

PLENT interviews Johanna Sigurðardóttir

Iceland is one of the countries where PLENT is present. Thanks to many helpful and sympathizing persons, we got an interview with the Prime Minister, Johanna Sigurðardóttir

One morning of October 2008, the Icelandic citizenship abruptly woke up from a decade of neo-liberal anaesthesia, listening in the news that their country was in bankruptcy. In this new life, they started organizing, trying to understand, asking for measures… and looking around in search to qualified persons to trust. This is how Johanna Sigurðardóttir definitely jumped to worldwide fame. In March 2009 she was elected, and acclaimed, Prime Minister.

Her answers show that she is undoubtedly committed to welfare state and to gender equality.

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