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study; and structuring health services concerning pregnancy and early childhood
to promote the participation of young fathers.
� Recognize workers‟ childcare obligations in setting terms of employment and
schedules of work.
� Include incentives for childcare contributions in recruitment and promotion
policies.
� Build into collective bargaining strategies the possibility for men‟s involvement in
care work.
� Develop programmes to provide boys and youth with specific skills, such as on
child care or domestic work.
� Engage religious organizations as partners in gender equality education for men
and boys, inviting them to explore religious teachings (for example, about
husbands in marriage relationships) that promote gender equality and social
justice.
Source: United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women with The Joint United Nations
Programme on HIV and AIDS, The International Labour Organization, and The United Nations
Development Programme, United Nations Commission on the Status of Women Expert Group Meeting on
“The Role of Men and Boys in Achieving Gender Equality”, Brazil,12 January 2004.
Lessons learned regarding paternal leave policies
� Having paternity leave policies in place may not be sufficient in those
countries where such legislation applies only to men who have stable
formal employment and does not apply to the vast number of men of
low-income families in the informal sector.
� Fathers may make low use of parental leave except when it is
mandatory and when it is paid at same rate as the father‟s salary
(Cohen, 2000).
� Even where paternity policies have long been in place, men may not
take advantage of them for fear of retaliation by employers and
sensitivity to how they may be perceived by their male peers or coworkers.
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Examples of public policies that promote father‟s greater involvement in
childcare
Scandinavian countries‟ progressive parental leave policies – in existence for
nearly 20 years – provide important examples of encouraging father‟s
involvement in childcare:
� In Norway, working parents are offered 42 weeks of paid Parental Leave. Until
1993, this parental leave could be shared on voluntary basis by either parent, but
fathers on average used less than 5 percent of the time. In 1993, the law was
changed to say that father had to use four weeks of this leave or the family lost it
altogether. As a result, use of parental leave by fathers went up to between 70
and 80 percent (Cohen, 2000), by 2005 it had gone up to 91 per cent (Norwegian
Ministry of Children and Equality, 2008-2009). As of July 2009, the law states
Men and Boys Knowledge Module January 2012 46