The aim with this case study was to do an intersectional, critical WPR (What’s the ‘problem’ represented to be) policy analysis of the Swedish governments preparatory work and government bill to achieve a more even distribution of parental leave between parents. In order to analyse the material, I used Carol Bacchi´s critical WPR approach to policy analysis. I critically examined how the preparatory work and government bill, that was later followed by the choice to introduce an additional reserved month for each parent, construct the ‘problem’, what presuppositions underlie the representation of the ‘problem’, what was left silenced and unproblematic and what effects and implications the representation of the ‘problem’ produces. Overall, the analysis showed that the problem is represented to be that the uneven distribution of parental leave is not gender-equal which could have negative effects for women. The underlying assumptions mainly focused on women, their participation in the labour market and other aspects that is connected to traditional gender norms and our doing of gender. Little, or non, attention has been put on intersectionality and therefore, something that is left unproblematic and silenced in the problem representation. The documents mainly talk about men and women, mothers and fathers which show that the preparatory work and the government bill did not adopt a clear intersectional approach and can, therefore, be at risk of being gendering and heteronorming in its effect.

The gender division of care work and housework is a product of numerous factors, both individual and national. By using the ‘Equal Gender Division of Labour’ (EGDL) indicator developed by Dearing (2016a), this thesis assesses correlations between parental leave policy and division of reproductive labour in 27 countries. OLS regression was used to test the hypothesis and determine correlations. By controlling for the correlations of individual attitudes, the thesis attempted to isolate the effects of parental leave policies. The results indicate that parental leave policies which promote gender equality are positively correlated with men’s larger shares of care work and housework. When control variables are added, the results demonstrate how parental leave policy is directly correlated with men’s larger share of care work. As for men’s share of housework, the thesis suggests that the original correlations are due to the effect of individual attitudes, which may also be impacted by parental leave policy.

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