Despite global commitments and efforts, women's equality, particularly at work, has still not been fully realized. Here, we examine whether improved parental leave policies, implemented at the national level, that encourage fathers to participate in caregiving can be effective at reducing unequal gender norms surrounding work. We use data from 1995–2018 that are nationally representative for nine countries, and employ a difference‐in‐differences approach to estimate the effect that changing parental leave policies has on attitudes towards women's work. Our results indicate that changes to parental leave policy that incentivize or encourage fathers to take time off are associated with improvements in attitudes towards women's equality in the workplace. Specifically, we find that incentives for paternal leave stimulates egalitarian changes in attitudes among both men and women. Our study is the first to longitudinally investigate whether parental leave policies can influence gender equitable norms and our findings support the notion that egalitarian changes in policy can improve gender norms.

中文翻译：

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废除限制性性别规范：设计更好的陪产假政策可以提供帮助吗？ 

尽管做出了全球性的承诺和努力，但妇女的平等，特别是在工作中的平等，仍未得到充分实现。在这里，我们研究了在国家一级实施，鼓励父亲参加照料的改进的育儿假政策是否可以有效地减少围绕工作的不平等性别规范。我们使用1995-2018年间在9个国家/地区具有国家代表性的数据，并采用差异法来估算更改育儿假政策对女性工作态度的影响。我们的结果表明，改变育儿假政策以激励或鼓励父亲休假与改善工作场所对妇女平等的态度有关。特别，我们发现，陪产假的诱因刺激了男女态度的平等变化。我们的研究是第一个纵向调查育儿假政策是否可以影响性别平等规范的研究，我们的发现支持这样的观点，即政策上的平等改变可以改善性别规范。