Taking the time

The increased labour participation rate of women and the rise in the share of care tasks assumed by men means that more and more people in the Netherlands are combining paid work with providing care. Women, in particular, show a massive preference for part-time working as a means of managing this combination. Childcare services and leave schemes offer other options for making it easier to combine work and care tasks. The Netherlands has had a statutory right to parental leave since 1991; a system of short-term care leave was introduced in 2001, and since 2005 there has also been a statutory right to long-term care leave. This report offers an overview of the demand for and use of these leave schemes. It investigates which factors influence their use, and to what extent there are differences in that use between men and women.

This study draws on data from the Dutch Labour Force Survey (EBB) published by Statistics Netherlands.