Parental-Leave Policy and Work-Life Balance in Portugal: Advances and Challenges for the Future

Despite progress in gender equality in several countries since the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, significant gender inequalities persist in several domains and, in particular, in women’s and men’s participation in paid and unpaid work. Work-life reconciliation policies for both women and men are thus a key dimension of the debate on how to move forward in the promotion of gender equality globally, as highlighted by the 25-year report review of the Beijing Platform for Action. This paper aims to contribute to this debate by looking at parental-leave policies adopted in Portugal since the 1990s. The analysis focuses on the main developments observed, the key challenges ahead and the potential of parental-leave policies to deconstruct gender roles rooted in the gender division of labour.