Excerpts from the paper:
Since the 1970s, Sweden has been relatively unique in its focus on implementing programs and services that help both women and men to balance family and paid employment. Family policy in Sweden has largely had a gender equality focus, particularly around women's labour force participation and men's role in childrearing. The childcare and parental insurance systems in particular seek to increase women's labour force participation while, at the same time, aiming for a more equal distribution of childrearing responsibilities between mothers and fathers. As such, these programs address issues of both employability and care. In the current climate of neoliberal globalization, Sweden offers an interesting case study, as it has been the model of a social democratic welfare state in the postwar era; and while neoliberalism has come to influence certain aspects of the Swedish welfare state, the area of family policy remains a haven of social democracy in the Swedish sense. While the 1990s were, for the most part, a decade marked by contraction, Sweden's childcare system actually expanded during this time, and is now more comprehensive than ever. In addition, while benefit levels were decreased somewhat in the 1990s, the length of leave within the parental insurance system was extended, and the system is the focus of current debate in Sweden over how to encourage fathers to take more leave. Largely due to these comprehensive childcare and parental leave programs, women now make up virtually half of the Swedish labour force. Yet, there remain issues such as gender segregation of occupations, concentrating women in low-paying traditional female careers such as the health and care sectors, as well as the fact that far more women than men use part-time work as a strategy to balance work and family life. Current patterns of women's employment will be analyzed in terms of gender equality in work and family life in Sweden.