Parental leave is more unequal than meets the eye, TCO states in its new report.

If you only look at Försäkringskassan's figures on parental allowance, it shows that women are away from work for just over 8 months on paid parental leave, but if you also include unpaid parental leave, as TCO did in the survey, that figure is almost 13 months.

It is significantly more than men and it has negative consequences for women's career and income, TCO assesses.

Therese Svanström believes that the development towards a more equal withdrawal of parental allowance days has stopped.

- We have become accustomed to norms in the labor market and in the home which mean that women take greater responsibility for unpaid work which ultimately means that you lose out on paid work.

Gender researcher Anneli Häyrén at Uppsala University agrees:

- The most worrying thing is that it is actually a declining trend.

This means that fathers do not take the time they actually can and are allowed to take.

Consequences in working life

The report examines parental leave during the child's first two years, when the largest part of parental leave is taken.

The survey is based on figures from Försäkringskassan and covers both unpaid and paid parental leave.

Measured in months, women were on average away from work due to paid and unpaid parental leave for 12.7 months during the children's first two years, for children born in 2019. The corresponding figure for men was 3.4 months.

- Concretely, it can lead to lower wages for women, worse working conditions and career opportunities, women are on sick leave to a greater extent and ultimately the pension gap is 30 percent today, says Therese Svanström.

Increased in the last six years

According to the report, the difference between women's and men's share of unpaid parental leave has increased over the past six years, with women taking an increasingly large share of the leave.

Gender researcher Anneli Häyrén is surprised by the results.

- Women continue to sacrifice themselves, I think, without seeing the future consequences of this sacrifice.

Therese Svanström at TCO believes that the gap risks getting even bigger.

- If economic equality is to increase, parental leave needs to be distributed more evenly.

We see that fathers in workplaces take the same amount of parental leave as their colleagues and the same with the mothers.