FUSsa-talk Mailing List: Fwd: The Female Factor - In Sweden, Men Can Have It All - NYTimes.com

[Robert Tapp (tappx001]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Robert Tapp <tappx001 [at] umn.edu>
> Date: June 15, 2010 10:42:00 AM CDT
> To: Humanist Institute Discussion Group Discussion Group <hidisc [at] 
> humanistinstitute.org>
> 
> 
> The story below is from today's New York Times. Author is Katrin Bennhold, 
> and the usual copyright info is also missing. Two comments:
> 
> 1. The Swedish situation is significant in showing that gender roles and 
> gender equalities can indeed be changed by social planning. Humanists, I'm 
> sure, will see the consequences of these changes as desirable and as long 
> overdue. Clearly the absence of powerful religious conservatisms in 
> Scandinavian countries helped bring about this progress. And the rapid 
> welcoming of these changes by people there  surely makes folk tales and 
> scriptures from ancient agricultural societies less powerful! Could that 
> happen here?
> 
> 2. This story is formatted and forwarded by the new <Reader> feature of 
> Apple's Safari browser. Both Mac and PC versions can be downloaded for free, 
> and it makes online reading MUCH easier. Try it yourself.
> 
>       http://www.apple.com/safari/what-is.html
> 
> Bob
> ----------------------------------------
> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/10/world/europe/10iht-sweden.html?ref=todayspaper
> 
> In Sweden, Men Can Have It All
> 
> SPOLAND, SWEDEN — Mikael Karlsson owns a snowmobile, two hunting dogs and 
> five guns. In his spare time, this soldier-turned-game warden shoots moose 
> and trades potty-training tips with other fathers. Cradling 2-month-old Siri 
> in his arms, he can’t imagine not taking baby leave. “Everyone does.”
> 
> From trendy central Stockholm to this village in the rugged forest south of 
> the Arctic Circle, 85 percent of Swedish fathers take parental leave. Those 
> who don’t face questions from family, friends and colleagues. As other 
> countries still tinker with maternity leave and women’s rights, Sweden may be 
> a glimpse of the future.
> 
> In this land of Viking lore, men are at the heart of the gender-equality 
> debate. The ponytailed center-right finance minister calls himself a 
> feminist, ads for cleaning products rarely feature women as homemakers, and 
> preschools vet books for gender stereotypes in animal characters. For nearly 
> four decades, governments of all political hues have legislated to give women 
> equal rights at work — and men equal rights at home.
> 
> Swedish mothers still take more time off with children — almost four times as 
> much. And some who thought they wanted their men to help raise baby now find 
> themselves coveting more time at home.
> 
> But laws reserving at least two months of the generously paid, 13-month 
> parental leave exclusively for fathers — a quota that could well double after 
> the September election — have set off profound social change.
> 
> Companies have come to expect employees to take leave irrespective of gender, 
> and not to penalize fathers at promotion time. Women’s paychecks are 
> benefiting and the shift in fathers’ roles is perceived as playing a part in 
> lower divorce rates and increasing joint custody of children.
> 
> In perhaps the most striking example of social engineering, a new definition 
> of masculinity is emerging.
> 
> “Many men no longer want to be identified just by their jobs,” said Bengt 
> Westerberg, who long opposed quotas but as deputy prime minister phased in a 
> first month of paternity leave in 1995. “Many women now expect their husbands 
> to take at least some time off with the children.”
> 
> Birgitta Ohlsson, European affairs minister, put it this way: “Machos with 
> dinosaur values don’t make the top-10 lists of attractive men in women’s 
> magazines anymore.” Ms. Ohlsson, who has lobbied European Union governments 
> to pay more attention to fathers, is eight months pregnant, and her husband, 
> a law professor, will take the leave when their child is born.
> 
> “Now men can have it all — a successful career and being a responsible 
> daddy,” she added. “It’s a new kind of manly. It’s more wholesome.”
> 
> Back in Spoland, Sofia Karlsson, a police officer and the wife of Mikael 
> Karlsson, said she found her husband most attractive “when he is in the 
> forest with his rifle over his shoulder and the baby on his back.”
> 
> In this new world of the sexes, some women complain that Swedish men are too 
> politically correct even to flirt in a bar. And some men admit to occasional 
> pangs of insecurity. “I know my wife expects me to take parental leave,” said 
> a prominent radio journalist who recently took six months off with his third 
> child and who preferred to remain anonymous. “But if I was on a lonely island 
> with her and Tarzan, I hope she would still pick me.”
> 
> In 1974, when Sweden became the first country to replace maternity leave with 
> parental leave, the few men who took it were nicknamed “velvet dads.”
> 
> Despite government campaigns — one featuring a champion weightlifter with a 
> baby perched on his bare biceps — the share of fathers on leave was stalled 
> at 6 percent when Mr. Westerberg entered government in 1991.
> 
> Sweden had already gone further than many countries have now in relieving 
> working mothers: Children had access to highly subsidized preschools from 12 
> months and grandparents were offered state-sponsored elderly care. The parent 
> on leave got almost a full salary for a year before returning to a guaranteed 
> job, and both could work six-hour days until children entered school. Female 
> employment rates and birth rates had surged to be among the highest in the 
> developed world.
> 
> 
> “I always thought if we made it easier for women to work, families would 
> eventually choose a more equal division of parental leave by themselves,” 
> said Mr. Westerberg, 67. “But I gradually became convinced that there wasn’t 
> all that much choice.”
> 
> Sweden, he said, faced a vicious circle. Women continued to take parental 
> leave not just for tradition’s sake but because their pay was often lower, 
> thus perpetuating pay differences. Companies, meanwhile, made clear to men 
> that staying home with baby was not compatible with a career.
> 
> “Society is a mirror of the family,” Mr. Westerberg said. “The only way to 
> achieve equality in society is to achieve equality in the home. Getting 
> fathers to share the parental leave is an essential part of that.”
> 
> Introducing “daddy leave” in 1995 had an immediate impact. No father was 
> forced to stay home, but the family lost one month of subsidies if he did 
> not. Soon more than eight in 10 men took leave. The addition of a second 
> nontransferable father month in 2002 only marginally increased the number of 
> men taking leave, but it more than doubled the amount of time they take.
> 
> Clearly, state money proved an incentive — and a strong argument with 
> reluctant bosses.
> 
> Among the self-employed, and in rural and immigrant communities, men are far 
> less likely to take leave, said Nalin Pekgul, chairwoman of the Social 
> Democratic Party’s women’s federation. In her Stockholm suburb, with a large 
> immigrant population, traditional gender roles remain conspicuously intact.
> 
> But the daddy months have left their mark. A study published by the Swedish 
> Institute of Labor Market Policy Evaluation in March showed, for instance, 
> that a mother’s future earnings increase on average 7 percent for every month 
> the father takes leave.
> 
> Among those with university degrees, a growing number of couples split the 
> leave evenly; some switch back and forth every few months to avoid one parent 
> assuming a dominant role — or being away from jobs too long. The higher women 
> rank, the more they resemble men: few male chief executives take parental 
> leave — but neither do the few female chief executives.
> 
> Parents may use their 390 days of paid leave however they want up to the 
> child’s eighth birthday — monthly, weekly, daily and even hourly — a schedule 
> that leaves particularly small, private employers scrambling to adapt.
> 
> While Sweden, with nine million people, made a strategic decision to get more 
> women into the work force in the booming 1960s, other countries imported more 
> immigrant men. As populations in Europe decline and new labor shortages loom, 
> countries have studied the Swedish model, said Peter Moss an expert on leave 
> policies at the University of London’s Institute of Education.
> 
> The United States — with lower taxes and traditional wariness of state 
> meddling in family affairs — is not among them.Portugal is the only country 
> where paternity leave is mandatory — but only for a week. Iceland has 
> arguably gone furthest, reserving three months for father, three months for 
> mother and allowing parents to share another three months.
> 
> The trend is, however, no longer limited to small countries. Germany, with 
> nearly 82 million people, in 2007 tweaked Sweden’s model, reserving two out 
> of 14 months of paid leave for fathers. Within two years, fathers taking 
> parental leave surged from 3 percent to more than 20 percent.
> 
> “That was a marker of pretty significant change,” said Kimberly Morgan, 
> professor at George Washington University and an expert on parental leave. If 
> Germany can do it, she said, “most countries can.”
> 
> If the Social Democrats win Sweden’s election on Sept. 19, as opinion polls 
> predict, they will double the nontransferable leave for each parent to four 
> months, said Mona Sahlin, the party leader who would become Sweden’s first 
> female prime minister.
> 
> Mrs. Sahlin, who had three children as a member of Parliament with her 
> husband sharing the leave, knows that this measure is not necessarily popular.
> 
> “Sometimes politicians have to be ahead of public opinion,” she said, noting 
> how controversial the initial daddy month was and how broadly it is now 
> simply expected.
> 
> 
> The least enthusiastic, in fact, are often mothers. In a 2003 survey by the 
> Social Insurance Agency, the most commonly cited reason for not taking more 
> paternity leave, after finances, was mother’s preference, said Ann-Zofie 
> Duvander, a sociologist at Stockholm University who worked at the agency at 
> the time.
> 
> Ann-Marie Prhat of the TCO employee federation said she had been determined 
> to share the parental leave with her husband. After many discussions, “we 
> practically signed a contract — six months for me and six months for him.”
> 
> Five months into the leave, she was enjoying her son. Could she stay home a 
> couple of months longer, she asked her husband? “In the end,” she said, “I 
> negotiated one extra month.”
> 
> Eight in 10 fathers now take a third of the total 13 months of leave — and 9 
> percent of fathers take 40 percent of the total or more — up from 4 percent a 
> decade ago.
> 
> The numbers tend to look more impressive in urban areas, like Stockholm, but 
> there are some surprises. Owing to extensive government campaigns, the 
> northern county of Vasterbotton, where the Karlssons live, has repeatedly 
> topped the "daddy index" of average leave the TCO federation publishes every 
> year, says its president, Sture Nordh.
> 
> For Carlos Rojas, 27, a Swedish-Spanish entrepreneur who runs one of a host 
> of new father groups campaigning for more paternal say at home, that is not 
> enough. His 2-year-old twin sons, Julian and Mateo, call him Mama. He and his 
> now former wife shared parental leave by alternating days at work and at home.
> 
> Fathers at home “are still often second-class parents,” since the mother 
> usually stays home first and establishes routine, Mr. Rojas said.
> 
> “How many dads cut their children’s nails?” he asked, admitting that he does 
> not. “I know she’s going to do it and so I don’t bother. We have to overcome 
> that if we truly want to share responsibility.”
> 
> In Sodermalm, Stockholm’s trendy south island, the days of fathers taking 
> only two months are clearly over. Men with strollers walk in the park, chat 
> in cafes, stock up at the supermarket or weigh their babies at walk-in 
> daycare centers.
> 
> Claes Boklund, a 35-year-old Web designer taking 10 months off with 
> 19-month-old Harry, admits he was scared at first: the baby, the cooking, the 
> cleaning, the sleepless nights. Six months into his leave, he says, he is 
> confident around Harry (and cuts his nails).
> 
> “It’s both harder and easier than you think,” he said.
> 
> Understanding what it is to be home with a child may help explain why divorce 
> and separation rates in Sweden have dropped since 1995 — at a time when 
> divorce rates elsewhere have risen, according to the national statistics 
> office. When couples do divorce or separate, shared custody has increased.
> 
> Fredrik and Cecilia Friberg both went part time soon after their daughter 
> Ylva was born last Christmas Eve. He works Monday, Wednesday and every other 
> Friday, his wife the remaining days. It helps that both are civil servants. 
> “I wanted to be there from the start. So much happens every week, I don’t 
> want to miss out,” said Mr. Friberg, 31.
> 
> Every once in a while, former traditions surface. “I get complimented on how 
> much I help at home, Cecilia gets no such gratitude,” Mr. Friberg said.
> 
> Some, however, worry that as men and women both work and both stay home with 
> kids, a gender identity crisis looms. “Manhood is being squeezed” by the 
> sameness, argued Ingemar Gens, an author and self-described gender consultant.
> 
> So is the Swedish taxpayer. Taxes account for 47 percent of gross domestic 
> product, compared with 27 percent in the United States and 40 percent in the 
> European Union overall. The public sector, famous for family-friendly perks, 
> employs one in three workers, including half of all working women. Family 
> benefits cost 3.3 percent of G.D.P., the highest in the world along with 
> Denmark and France, said Willem Adema, senior economist at the Organization 
> for Economic Cooperation and Development.
> 
> Yet Sweden looks well balanced: at 2.1 percent and 40 percent of G.D.P., 
> respectively, public deficit and debt levels are a fraction of those in most 
> developed economies these days, testimony perhaps to fiscal management born 
> of a banking crisis and recession in the 1990s. High productivity and 
> political consensus keep the system going.
> 
> “There are remarkably few complaints,” said Linda Haas, a professor of 
> sociology at Indiana University currently at the University of Goteborg. With 
> full-time preschool guaranteed at a maximum of about $150 a month and leave 
> paid at 80 percent of salary up to $3,330 a month, “people feel that they are 
> getting their money’s worth.”
> 
> Companies, facing high payroll taxes and women and men taking leave in 
> unpredictable installments, can be less sure.
> 
> 
> Tales of male staff members being discouraged from long leave are still not 
> uncommon, although it is not fashionable to say so. Mr. Boklund said his 
> office “was not happy” about his extended absence.
> 
> Bodil Sonesson Gallon, head of sales at Axis Communications, an IT company 
> that specializes in video surveillance, admits that parental leave can be 
> disruptive — for careers and companies. She laments that with preschools 
> starting at 12 months and little alternative child care, there is huge 
> pressure for parents to take at least a year off.
> 
> Small businesses find it particularly tricky to juggle absences, said Sofia 
> Bergstrom, social insurance expert at the Confederation of Swedish 
> Enterprise, which represents 60,000 companies. Worse than parental leave, she 
> says, is the 120-day annual allowance for parents to tend to sick children, 
> which is impossible to plan and which is suspected of being widely abused.
> 
> “The key issue for business is planning ahead,” said Ms. Bergstrom.
> 
> But in a sign that the broader cultural shift has acquired a dynamic of its 
> own, a survey by Ms. Haas and Philip Hwang, a psychology professor at 
> Goteborg University, shows that 41 percent of companies reported in 2006 that 
> they had made a formal decision to encourage fathers to take parental leave, 
> up from only 2 percent in 1993.
> 
> Some managers try to make the most of the short-term openings to test 
> potential recruits. Others say planning longer absences is easier and 
> encourage fathers to take six months rather than three. A system of flexible 
> working hours has evolved. Even senior employees may leave at 4:30 p.m. to 
> collect children from school, but are expected to log on at home at night. A 
> growing number of employers top up the salary replacement the state pays 
> parents to 90 percent of their salary for several months.
> 
> For many companies, a family-friendly work pattern has simply become a new 
> way of attracting talent.
> 
> “Graduates used to look for big paychecks. Now they want work-life balance,” 
> said Goran Henriksson, head of human resources at the cellphone giant 
> Ericsson in Sweden, where last year 28 percent of female employees took 
> leave, and 24 percent of male staff did. “We have to adapt.”
> 
> 
> 
>