Women's political voice supporting men's paternity leave

Do countries with greater women's political representation offer better policy protections for male workers with family caregiving responsibilities via stronger paternity leave policies? Using data from the Global Care Policy Index project on a diverse set of 30 countries' paternity leave policies, we find that the share of women's representation in their country's national parliament is strongly and positively correlated with more robust and longer paternity leave coverage. Qualitative evidence from five case studies - Sweden, Iceland, the UK, Sri Lanka and Nigeria - with varying paternity leave policies demonstrates how this relationship works on the ground.