PARENTAL LEAVE AS A GENDER EQUALITY POLICY

The involvement of men and women in the labor market makes the issue of childcare a critical social-political and economical problem in the welfare regimes. Since then, welfare states develop social policies to achieve the reconciliation of work and family life, and to provide the childcare services. Among these policies, parental leave is crucially important. Therefore, the aim of this article is to examine the issue of parental leave as a gender equality policy considering various successful implementations across the world. The main argument is based on the idea that parental leave can be regarded as one of the transformative social policies to promote gender equality. The adoption of gender-sensitive approach in the formulation of parental leave helps to the enhancement of gender equality as well as the improvement of policies addressing women’s employment. In addition to them, this sort of approach in the implementation of parental leave is more transitable for the new emergent family types. Thus, the article intends to explain the principal characteristics of gender sensitive parental leave, and thereby to scrutinize the implementation of the parental leave in Turkey from a gender equality eye