Undoing or unstructuring gender: the effects of the Slovak leave policy for fathers on the change of the gender structure

Since the 1990s, leave policies for fathers–typically parts of parental leave set aside for fathers–have been gaining popularity as a solution to persisting inequalities in the gendered division of leaves. Research has focused on their contribution to undoing gender and found that changes in parents' division of labour have varied within and across contexts. I argue that to understand the effectiveness of leave policy for fathers, it is helpful to look beyond undoing gender (changes to parents' division of leave), to unstructuring gender (policy effects on multiple dimensions of the gender structure, which, if unchanged, may limit policy effectiveness). To illustrate my argument, I investigate the 2011 Slovak leave policy for fathers, introduced into a context characterized by an inegalitarian gender structure, including societal gendered norms on the division of leave, inegalitarian individual gendered identities and unequal patterns of leave division. Drawing on interviews with 38 mothers and fathers, I find that while the policy has affected a change in parents' leave-division, there was little evidence of change to the prevalent norms or parents' identities. Instead, these dimensions of the gender structure persisted and continued constraining fathers' uptake of the policy and parents' more equal division of leave.