Sharing Parental Leave between Mothers and Fathers: Experimental Evidence from a Messaging Intervention in Uruguay

Martina Querejeta Rabosto, Cecilia Olivieri, Andrea Ailin Tomio, Jorge Luis Castaneda Nunez and Ana Maria Munoz Boudet

No 10340, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Parental leave has been increasingly used as a family policy to facilitate balancing care and work responsibilities and promoting gender equality. However, fathers' parental leave participation is still low, even when it offers both job and wage protection. This paper examines the effects of an information and awareness-raising intervention, delivered via email and text messages on men’s and women’s awareness and intentions of shared take-up of a parental leave program. The experiment provided recent and prospective parents meeting the social security requirements to benefit from parental leave with information about the program. Additionally, a subset of recent parents received messages that told them about (i) the benefits of fathers’ involvement in childcare, or (ii) the importance of planning parental childcare. The intervention was successful in increasing knowledge about the parental leave program and shifting traditional gender norm views among women, regarding father’s involvement and care planning. For men, knowledge about the program increased. However, the strong association between parental leave and breastfeeding led to fathers privileging mothers’ use of the leave benefit. The findings show limited impact on actual leave taking, with the message about couples’ leave planning increasing the effective use of parental leave among fathers compared to the information message. The results show that low-cost, targeted information interventions can have substantial effects on program knowledge among potential future beneficiaries. Although these interventions can support more equal gender roles and change gendered attitudes toward care responsibilities, they are not sufficient to shift behaviors.

Date: 2023-03-06
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