Trends in parental leave in the Nordic countries: Has the forward march of gender equality halted?

The aim of this article is to provide an overview of the development of parental leave in the Nordic countries in the last decade or so and explain the different roads taken by individual countries in this regard. Focusing on the recent development, mainly on father’s quota, we discuss whether we are witnessing a paradigm shift in some of these countries, away from an emphasis on gender equality to a more traditional family approach, with the mother as the main parent, thinly guised as ‘free choice’ of individual families. Furthermore, the article asks why the changes in question have taken place and examines the positions of different political parties towards the issue. The article shows that the Nordic countries are developing somewhat different policies and the gap between both policies and politics in the Nordic countries seems to be increasing rather than closing up.