Parental Leave and Gender Gaps in Paid and Unpaid Work in Australia and the UK

Mengxuan Li , the University of Queensland
Janeen Baxter, University of Queensland

The transition to parenthood is a critical life course stage where gender inequality in the home often deepens, as women disproportionately take on unpaid domestic and care work. While paid parental leave policies aim to support more equitable divisions of labour, evidence on their effectiveness remains mixed. This study investigates changes in within-couple gender gaps in time use across domestic work, care work, and paid labour in Australia and the United Kingdom, using longitudinal couple-level data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, the British Household Panel Study, and the UK Household Longitudinal Study. We apply fixed-effects event-study models to track time-use gaps from 3 years prior to five years after the birth of a first child and test for moderating effects of fathers’ paid parental leave uptake and household income. We find that gender gaps widen significantly following childbirth in both countries and persist five years later, particularly in unpaid care work and paid employment. In Australia, fathers’ uptake of paid parental leave is associated with even larger gender gaps in unpaid labour, suggesting additive care burdens rather than redistribution. In contrast, UK couples where fathers took leave exhibit modestly narrower paid work gaps, though unpaid labour gaps remain unchanged. Household income also moderates outcomes: high-income couples display more stable and balanced trajectories, while low-income families experience more volatile and unequal divisions of labour. These findings highlight that paid leave alone cannot resolve gender inequality; socioeconomic resources fundamentally shape how families navigate early parenthood.

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 Presented in Session 55. Parenthood, Work and Inequality across the Life Course