Women’s parental leave—and their disproportionate share of the family responsibilities that follow—has become one of the key factors for understanding gender inequality in the labor markets across the Baltic Sea Region and Eastern Europe. In this project, we argue that working life across the region is shaped by leave-based workplace discrimination, a form of unequal treatment of women and men based on leave-taking only. We propose that gendered expectations surrounding parental leave—where women are expected to take long leaves and men short—result in discriminatory practices against those who deviate from these norms. Such practices reinforce a workplace culture where mothers comply with the expectation of extended leave while fathers limit theirs, thereby reproducing one of the most significant gender inequalities in working life in the Baltic Sea Region and Eastern Europe today.
Our project centers on the collection of two comparative survey datasets: one in Sweden and one in Poland. At its core is a factorial vignette experiment in which respondents evaluate a fictional character. Leave-based workplace discrimination is defined as the difference in evaluations between female and male colleagues with identical parental leave durations. In addition to identifying the scope and mechanisms of this form of discrimination, the project aims to assess the effectiveness of various workplace policies designed to reduce it.