2.1. The value of a comparative study: new knowledge for the parental leave landscape

Before setting out the methodological approach and contribution made by this article, it is important to consider current knowledge about paid parental leave policies in Latin America. This study builds on the notable investment in research to date that has sought to compare parental leave in Latin America (Barbosa et al. Reference Barbosa, Fabris, Abbas, Caruso, Giusti and Coimbra2023; Güezmes García and Vaeza Reference Güezmes García and Vaeza2022; Blofield and Touchton Reference Blofield and Touchton2020; Marzonetto and Franzoni Reference Marzonetto and Martínez Franzoni2022). Indeed, there is a relatively high number of studies of Latin America when compared to other regions, such as Asia (Vijeyarasa Reference Vijeyarasa2024). This interest in comparative research in the region is arguably unsurprising given the extent to which Latin America is marked by characteristics that lend themselves to comparison in this field.

Beyond a (primarily) shared majority language and legal traditions, numerous traits are common across the region when viewed through a gender equality lens. Several presidential systems have enjoyed a relatively high number of women in executive office, with feminist politics and policy-making infused into a handful of the region’s democratic transitions (Jalalzai Reference Jalalzai2015; Stevenson Reference Stevenson2012; Vijeyarasa Reference Vijeyarasa2022, p. 42). Some scholars have gone so far as to argue that the presence of women in the legislature has influenced the length and generosity of parental leave, while a chief executive’s gender policies also act as an important marker on family leave policies nationally (Blofield and Touchton Reference Blofield and Touchton2020, p. 3). Social policies were also a regional commonality at the turn of the twenty-first century, particularly although not exclusively in relation to care but also infant health and poverty (Blofield and Touchton Reference Blofield and Touchton2020, p. 1).

Yet a further defining characteristic of the region is the economic disparities that exist between those who can afford paid domestic work and those who deliver it, shaping the rigour with which demands are made by parents from different socio-economic backgrounds for national law reform when it comes to state-funded paid parental leave. Such inequities permit the well-off to outsource care relatively easily to paid domestic workers in ways that may reduce the pressure among those socio-economically better-off to push for law and policy reform (Blofield and Touchton Reference Blofield and Touchton2020, p. 5). Other scholars have also observed that the value given to family ties may be stronger in Latin American countries than in high-income countries from North America and Europe. Parenting in the region is characterised by interdependence and familism, as reflected in the tendency to live close to families and show a heightened commitment to, but also dependency on, the support provided by family members (Blanco Castro et al. Reference Blanco Castro, Pérez Huenteo and Cova Solar2022, p. 413). Such extended family relations, it is argued, weaken the burden on mothers and fathers alone and again, temper demands from parents for reform.

While Nordic countries, such as Sweden and Iceland, are widely recognised as at the forefront of most of the legislative and policy advances (Eydal et al. Reference Eydal, Gíslason, Rostgaard, Brandth, Duvander and Lammi-Taskula2015, p. 168), often named as providing the most generous leave entitlements in the world’s most mature parental leave models (Brandth et al. Reference Brandth, Bungum and Kvande2022, p. 173), Latin American studies have recognised that leave policies for fathers in the region remain in their infancy (Brandth et al. Reference Brandth, Bungum and Kvande2022, p. 173; Blofield and Franzoni 2015, p. i). Given this reality, this article seeks to undertake both Latin American regional modelling and compare those results to global models. These relatively large-scale regional and comparative studies of paid leave offer an excellent platform on which to build this research. For instance, Pedro Barbosa and colleagues have studied nine countries in the region (Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Peru, Uruguay and Argentina) (Barbosa et al. Reference Barbosa, Fabris, Abbas, Caruso, Giusti and Coimbra2023). Other studies are even more comprehensive. Gabriela Marzonetto and Juliana Martínez Franzoni have compared nineteen countries regionally (Marzonetto and Franzoni Reference Marzonetto and Martínez Franzoni2022) while Merike Blofield and Michael Touchton have analysed parental leave policies across eighteen countries (Blofield and Touchton Reference Blofield and Touchton2020).

Yet both of the latter two large datasets are dated: significant developments have unfolded since their 2015 and 2016 respective timestamps, with the data having been collected a decade ago. This gap in time is particularly stark given the degree of law reform in the paid parental leave space in the past five years alone. Examples from the region include both legislative amendments and tabled bills that could vastly change the landscape, which are discussed further in Part 4. For instance, both Costa Rica and Panama went from no paternity leave in 2015 to providing eight days (Government of Costa Rica 1943, Sec. 95(b)) and three days of paid leave (National Assembly of the Republic of Panama 2017, Art. 3), respectively, for fathers today. Across the region in 2013, six countries had no paid paternity leave, nine countries offered leave of between one and five days and four countries offered leave of between ten and fourteen days. Today, only Cuba and Honduras lack any type of paid paternity leave. This is despite the Cuban Family Code of 1975 establishing a shared responsibility for both the mother and father to attend to, care for, protect, educate, assist, give deep affection to and prepare children for life (Government of Cuba 1975, Arts. 59, 81). Argentina (Republic of Argentina 1976, Art. 158), Guatemala (Government of Guatemala 2011, Sec. 61(o)(3)) and the Dominican Republic (Secretary of State of Labor, Dominican Republic 1992, Art. 54) all sit at two days, while Colombia’s ten days of paternity leave increased to fourteen days in July 2021 (Departamento Administrativo de la Función Pública 2021, Sec. 6(a)) and Ecuador’s ten days of paternity leave increased to fifteen days in May 2023 (Government of Ecuador 2005, Vol. No. 2005-017, Art. 152).

Nonetheless, it is important not to overstate regional unity. Family dynamics in Latin America and the Caribbean are characterised by different traditions. While the ongoing footprint of European colonialism remains and we can see a mix of Christian family models alongside African, mestizo and indigenous traditions, these demographics have differing impacts on households and family structures. While in the Mesoamerican and Andean region, families were organised in a patrilineal way, in the area of the Caribbean, nuclear families of matrilineal and patrilineal order are common (Blanco Castro et al. Reference Blanco Castro, Pérez Huenteo and Cova Solar2022, p. 413). Importantly, too, this article for the most part focuses on the roles of biological and non-biological mothers and fathers in same-sex and different-sex couples, whereas in many communities such as indigenous-Andean traditions in the Argentinian Northwest, numerous family members participate in daily childrearing (Blanco Castro et al. Reference Blanco Castro, Pérez Huenteo and Cova Solar2022, p. 413). With this disclaimer in mind, I now turn to the methods used to compare.

2.2. Methodological approach

This article offers a study of legislation in force as of 1 January 2025. It is not only a significant update on existing knowledge concerning paid parental leave in Latin America but also analyses the regulatory framework from a richer legal perspective, bringing international labour law into conversation with international women’s rights law which is in turn brought into conversation with the work of equality law scholars. In doing so, it pays much needed attention to the inequalities experienced between different-sex and same-sex couples when it comes to accessing leave. Indeed, the leave entitlements for same-sex parents – a group that itself contains highly diverse family structures – is complex, which may explain why it has been largely avoided in most comparative literature.

I begin by considering the existing knowledge concerning paid parental leave in the region. Marzonetto and Martínez Franzoni provide a comprehensive, although now dated, study of parental leave policies in nineteen countries in the region. Yet their categorisation of leave has a major limitation when viewed from a women’s rights perspective. Marzonetto and Martínez Franzoni frame paid paternity leave of ‘more than a week’ at 100 per cent of wages, when offered alongside fourteen to eighteen weeks of paid maternity leave, as falling within an ‘equal gender division of labour-oriented’ model (Marzonetto and Franzoni Reference Marzonetto and Martínez Franzoni2022, p. 299). Such an approach overvalues the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) maternity protection floor (of fourteen weeks of paid maternity leave and a recommended eighteen weeks of paid leave) and fails to interrogate the consequences of the notable differences in leave entitlements between mothers and fathers under such a model. Rather, such a limited and unequal amount of leave allocated to fathers largely results in the responsibility for childcare and childrearing remaining with mothers in different-sex couples. Indeed, most research – for instance, a 2023 study of thirty-seven countries that included Chile, Colombia and Ecuador – has demonstrated that countries that offer significantly longer parental leave to one parent – which is by and large the mother, either in law or in practice – paradoxically perpetuate childcare inequities between women and men, even if the entitlements given to that one parent are relatively generous (Samekin Reference Samekin2023, p. 22). Of concern is that the approach of Marzonetto and Franzoni has since been replicated in a study by UN Women (Blofield and Franzoni 2015, p. 8).

By contrast, I utilise a women’s rights lens to identify which countries have shifted towards a model that can close inequality gaps not only in caring but also in labour force participation and pay. Such a women’s rights approach perceives care as the equal responsibility of all parents. This article also benefits from the global human rights framework that, in CEDAW, established a sharing of responsibility between men and women for the upbringing of children, noted at the outset of this article, and from the ILO Workers with Family Responsibilities Convention of 1981 (No. 156), which made explicit the right of parents to ‘parental leave’ (International Labour Organization 1981, Convention No. 156, Art. 22).

How global women’s rights norms have been domesticated in national policy in Latin America and the Caribbean is also relevant (Friedman Reference Friedman2009, p. 350). These national-level gendered norms have a direct bearing on leave-taking. The value placed on women’s rights domestically will depend on how human rights ideas are framed, how they are introduced and the history and culture in which such ‘vernaculization’ occurs (Levitt and Merry Reference Levitt and Merry2009, p. 441). Constitutional frameworks in each country may also accord human rights different legal values. There are vast differences in the policy goals that drive nations to introduce paid parental leave. In Uruguay, for instance, the government was largely concerned about low fertility rates alongside declarations by the Uruguayan Minister for Labour during the 2013 reforms about ‘underused human capital’ resulting from labour market discrimination against mothers who struggle to remain in the labour force after giving birth (Blofield and Touchton Reference Blofield and Touchton2020, pp. 14–15). Women’s rights goals are frequently infused with economic ones.

Moreover, regionally, regimes unfavourable to human rights have seen a privileging of the family unit over women’s rights for an extensive period of the region’s history in the 1970s (Friedman Reference Friedman2009, p. 359). Some scholars have suggested that this prioritising of the family unit over individual women continued even as regional human rights instruments were ratified in the decades that followed, including the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women, known as the Convention of Belém do Pará, adopted in 1994 (Friedman Reference Friedman2009, p. 365). The consequence may be less attention paid both to women’s rights to leave entitlements and to the need to close gaps in entitlements for fathers and mothers in order to address related gender inequalities in care work, pay and financial security.

Nonetheless, there is a significant and clear influence of and ownership over such women’s rights norms at a local level in Latin America. Scholars describe the enactment of laws to enshrine six weeks of protected post-birth recovery for mothers in domestic legislation as ‘under the influence’ of the 1919 ILO Maternity Protection Convention No. 3 (Sorj and Fraga Reference Sorj and Fraga2022). Moreover, from the first Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (held in Havana, Cuba in 1997) to the tenth conference (held in Quito, Ecuador in 2008), care as a locally owned concept has shifted in many countries in the region from a partial provision of support for working women in the formal sector to one that today includes working fathers. Policies seek to find a balance between work and family life and ensure care for informal and seasonal working mothers (Güezmes García and Vaeza Reference Güezmes García and Vaeza2022).

Much research on paid parental leave has examined leave policies from the perspective of undifferentiated families, thus occluding major differences in the ways in which leave policies are available and taken up across numerous categories including ethnicity, sexuality, labour market position and migration status (Mohun Himmelweit Reference Mohun Himmelweit, Dobrotić, Blum and Koslowskin.d., p. 2). Methodologically, this article responds to a notable gap in the literature that has largely focused on different-sex parental configurations when it comes to paid leave policies. In Part 4.1.i and 4.4.ii, I pay attention to the experiences of adopting parents and same-sex parents, including the extent to which leave entitlements are guaranteed in law to a greater diversity of parents and families. This article therefore not only offers a contemporary dataset – closing a near ten-year gap in time since the data studied in previous comparative studies – but also brings a new rights-based approach to how we critique and reconceptualise leave policies for parents.

3.1. Paid maternity leave

Women’s unequal share of responsibility for the care of children – in many nations, a primary responsibility placed on mothers – has been a persistent factor in the maintenance of a gender gap (Saraf Reference Saraf2021, p. 42), including a gender pay gap (Fredman Reference Fredman2014, p. 442). Yet, maternity leave as a legal concept tends to perceive little distinction between pregnancy and parenting. International law – and bodies such as the ILO and its 1919 Maternity Protection Convention (No. 3) (International Labour Organization 1919) – which prohibited women workers from returning to work after child birth for at least six weeks ‘implicitly reinforce[d] women’s primary responsibility for childcare’ (Fredman Reference Fredman2014, p. 449). The ILO’s Convention No. 183 (2000) set a minimum number of paid weeks of maternity leave – a maternity protection floor – of fourteen weeks (International Labour Organization 2000, Convention No. 183, Art. 4(1)). Meanwhile, ILO delegates expressed considerable concern during the emergence of maternity leave as a global norm, suggesting it would contribute the dissolution of the family (Boris and Jensen Reference Boris and Jensen2019, p. 271) and lead to potentially ‘disastrous consequences’ for the ‘psychological and physical health’ of the child (Murray Reference Murray2001, p. 30).

The 2000 ILO Maternity Protection Recommendation No. 191 increased the recommended weeks of paid leave from work for mothers to eighteen weeks (International Labour Organization (ILO) 2000, Art. 1(1)). Such gender-based distinctions carved out compulsory paid leave for mothers in response to women’s reproductive capacities, the need to protect women’s employment and to ensure women’s bodies can recover while they care for their children during a period that includes pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period. Yet as noted by Argentinian pracademic Eleanor Faur, sociologist and policy-maker, carved out maternity leave is based on a logic of rights but ‘heteronormativity continues to be the prevailing canon’ (Faur Reference Faur2018, p. 621). No global norm regarding leave for fathers was established, leaving women with the rights related to pregnancy, birth and childcare but, by correlation, the responsibilities and duties too.

Today, paid maternity leave forms part of most countries’ national family and social security policies. In many Global South nations, scholarly work on maternity leave continues to make the case for the socio-economic benefits of providing leave, including longer periods of breastfeeding of newborns, lower infant mortality, higher vaccination rates and, for birth mothers, better postpartum health (Ahmed and Fielding Reference Ahmed and Fielding2019, p. 1). From a gender equality perspective, in the early 2000s, Marian Baird, scholar and expert on paid parental leave in Australia, identified liberal-economic typologies to explain how and why different governments make paid maternity leave available to women. Some governments pursued a welfare model that stressed the role of the man as the primary breadwinner and offered parental leave to compensate women for their almost exclusive role in ‘reproduction, care-giving and domestic service’ (Baird Reference Baird2004, p. 265). At the turn of the century, we saw the emergence of what Baird called the ‘new equity orientation’ to compensate the multiple roles of women as wives and mothers, workers and citizens (Baird Reference Baird2004, p. 261).

The field has continued to evolve and many write of a ‘forward march’ for gender equality in the area of care, with Nordic countries leading the way (Eydal et al. Reference Eydal, Gíslason, Rostgaard, Brandth, Duvander and Lammi-Taskula2015) and the USA as the main outlier among ‘wealthy’ (OECD) nations, with no right to paid family or medical leave in US federal law (Weston Williamson Reference Weston Williamson2024). While this progress must be acknowledged, the extent to which countries in Central America, Panama and the Dominican Republic (CAPADOM) fail to reach the fourteen-week minimum set by the ILO is also notable (López-Marmolejo and Rodríguez-Caballero Reference López-Marmolejo and Vladimir Rodríguez-Caballero2023, p. 393). As demonstrated in my data in Part 4, a handful of countries continue to fall short.

These frameworks for understanding paid maternity leave offer benchmarks to assess progress. At the same time, these models raise the question: how and why do different governments make leave available to men? Moreover, what are the interrelationships between these models and a nation’s approach to gendered norms, sex and sexuality, if any?

3.2. Finding and reinforcing men’s place in paid care

There are two types of leave for fathers discussed in this article. First, paternity leave refers to the paid weeks of leave to be taken after birth, often in the period immediately after the child is born. In different-sex couples, this leave tends to be taken with both the mother and father present simultaneously; in fact, in some regimes – such as in Spain since January 2021 – parents are mandated to take six weeks of paid leave simultaneously (Vijeyarasa Reference Vijeyarasa2026). Simultaneous leave is a time when the father shares the responsibility for care with the mother (Eydal and Rostgaard Reference Eydal and Rostgaard2018, p. 267). Paternity leave is different from parental leave, the latter being a time when the father is often the sole carer.

Mandatory maternity leave has been a principle of international law for over a century. By contrast, there is no international legal entitlement addressing the right to mandatory paternity leave (Fredman Reference Fredman2014, p. 451). In many respects, it is unsurprising that change was demanded. Equality scholar Sandra Fredman, writing in this journal a decade ago, called it a ‘levelling up’ – that is, ‘extending women’s parenting rights to fathers’ (Fredman Reference Fredman2014, p. 442). The European Union’s 2019 Work-Life Balance Directive became the first supranational norm requiring paid parental leave anywhere in the world (European Parliament and the Council of the European Union 2019), and requires ten days of paid paternity leave and, of the four months of parental leave, two to be non-transferable between parents. Yet it is fair to doubt whether these new requirements can achieve the degendering or desexing of care that is required to liberate ‘traditionally sexed women and men’ while potentially grounding equality in access to leave entitlements for LGBTIQ parents (Rosenblum Reference Rosenblum2012, p. 61).

While paid leave for fathers – paternity leave and parental leave – has been introduced in various forms in law, policy-makers worldwide remain confounded by the challenge of encouraging men to avail themselves of such paid parental leave schemes. This has been a roadblock not only in Latin America but globally. Low rates of wage replacement, where the resulting income lost from taking leave is considerable, have a direct impact on leave-taking patterns (Albrecht et al. Reference Albrecht, Fichtl and Redler2017, pp. 49–50). Incentives are often needed to encourage men to utilise their rights (Fredman Reference Fredman2014, p. 443). Enforcement and monitoring may also be a challenge – what was at the time ten days of compulsory paternity leave in Portugal saw take-up rates below 100 per cent (Albrecht et al. Reference Albrecht, Fichtl and Redler2017, p. 50). In the Philippines, lack of sanctions for non-compliance has also been flagged as an issue (Caparas Reference Caparas2011, p. 8).

Research suggests that while fathers may use available paternity leave, it is their take-up rates for their entitlements to parental leave – transferable shared leave – that remain particularly low, and in most cases, fathers transfer such available leave days to mothers where this is legally possible (Eydal and Rostgaard Reference Eydal and Rostgaard2018, p. 267). These challenges with transferability lead to a sense that a generous, individual and non-transferable right to paid leave for fathers is the best approach, which I describe in this article as the ‘gold standard’. Other scholars have also named this the ‘ultimate goal’ (Meil et al. Reference Meil, Wall, Atalaia, Escobedo, Dobrotić, Blum and Koslowski2022, p. 225): to degender and desex leave use, reduce discrimination against women in the labour market and foster co-responsibility (Meil et al. Reference Meil, Wall, Atalaia, Escobedo, Dobrotić, Blum and Koslowski2022, p. 221).

The benefits for families as well as the individuals within them have also been shown. In US studies, fathers who take leave when a child is young are more involved across the first few years of a child’s life (Petts and Knoester Reference Petts and Knoester2018), while research from Norway suggests that children even do better in school, particularly in cases where the father has a higher level of education than the mother (Petts and Knoester Reference Petts and Knoester2018). Research from Sweden has shown better health outcomes for men, which naturally means a better outcome for the public health system as a whole (Månsdotter et al. Reference Månsdotter, Lindholm and Winkvist2007). One study of Chile, Mexico and Colombia revealed the extent to which concurrently increasing the duration and availability of paid maternity and paternity leave reduces infant and neonatal mortality (Validova et al. Reference Validova, Uruchima, Yamada, Vives, Schnake-Mahl, Friche and Braverman2025). Paternity leave offers a compelling business case too, signalling more supportive corporate cultures and driving up employer commitments to flexible workplace policies (Baird et al. Reference Baird, Hill and Gulesserian2019). Indeed, the extent to which legislated and non-transferable leave will actually lead to more gender-equal outcomes depends on the extent to which workplace cultures adjust to policies set by governments (Feldman and Gran Reference Feldman and Gran2016, p. 97). Employer attitudes are both a reflection of and contributor to workplace equality.

4.1. Paid maternity leave in Latin America

Paid maternity leave is provided across the region. However, several Latin American countries fall below the ILO Maternity Floor, which requires fourteen weeks or ninety-eight days of paid leave. The regional average reflected in Figure 1 for the number of paid days of maternity leave available in national law is 105.5 days, accounting for the fact that Colombia and Venezuela are regional leaders, each offering 182 days of paid leave. Countries not meeting the protection floor include Argentina (ninety days) (Republic of Argentina 1976, Sec. 177) and Bolivia, which both offer ninety days of paid leave (National Congress of Bolivia 1939, Art. 61); the Dominican Republic (Secretary of State of Labor, Dominican Republic 1992, Sec. 236); Ecuador (Government of Ecuador 2005, Vol. No. 2005-017, Sec. 152); Guatemala (Government of Guatemala 2011, Sec. 152); Mexico (El Congreso de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos 2015, Sec. 170(II)); and Nicaragua (El Presidente de la República de Nicaragua 1996, Sec. 141), which all offer eighty-four days of paid leave; and Honduras, which offers seventy days of paid maternity leave (Government of Honduras (Secretaría de Trabajo y Seguridad Social) 1959, Sec. 135). There appears to be an unstated target of eighty-four days of paid leave that many nations in the region have reached but at which they have stalled. These eighty-four days – or twelve weeks – were likely to be a trend among progressive governments in Spanish-speaking countries. For instance, in Spain in 1929, the country introduced a Royal Decree on maternity insurance, which included twelve weeks of leave, encompassing, if needed, six weeks of rest prior to birth and a compulsory six weeks of rest after delivery (Government of Spain 1929). Latin America appears to have plateaued, with many countries reaching this level of benefit but having not progressed further.

With regard to wage replacement, all maternity payments noted in Figure 1 are at the full rate of pay. In most of Latin America, leave is contribution-based. Nonetheless, the source of payment varies across the region. For instance, in Ecuador, seventy-five per cent of maternity pay is covered by the state social security system, the remaining twenty-five per cent by the employer. In El Salvador, seventy-five per cent of maternity pay is covered by the employer. In the Dominican Republic, fifty per cent of maternity pay is covered by the state social security system, the remaining fifty per cent by the employer. This contribution-based approach has attracted criticism. Research has shown that when employers are responsible for funding parental leave, under what are called employer liability schemes, they work against the parent. With regards to women workers, research shows liable employers are reluctant to hire, retain or promote them (International Labour Organization and United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific 2022, p. 4). Brazilian scholars Bila Sorj and Alexandre Barbosa Fraga describe the requirement to contribute – as opposed to paid parental leave being a universal right of all citizens – as a form of ‘regulated citizenship’ (Reference Sorj and Fraga2022). As a result, in countries such as Brazil, access to leave entitlements – or lack of access – raises gendered, racialised and migration-status issues (Sorj and Fraga Reference Sorj and Fraga2020).

A distinctive feature of the region is the relatively high number of days of maternity leave either recommended or stipulated for the period prior to birth. For instance, in both Argentina (Republic of Argentina 1976, Art. 158) and Peru (Comisión de Trabajo del Congreso de la República 2018, Art. 1) women are required to take forty-five and forty-nine days respectively of maternity leave prior to birth. In Argentina, this can be reduced but there is a minimum of thirty days pre-birth leave (Republic of Argentina 1976, Art. 158). By contrast, in Peru, the decision to alter this requirement rests in the hands of the worker (Comisión de Trabajo del Congreso de la República 2018, Art. 275). In Bolivia, there is a requirement of forty-five days of leave prior to and forty-five days after birth (National Congress of Bolivia 1939, Art. 61). In Guatemala, pregnant women can take up to thirty days of leave prior to birth and fifty-four days after (Government of Guatemala 2011, Sec. 152), as is the case in Venezuela (Government of Venezuela 2012, Sec. 336). In general, the pre-birth days of leave are not lost if not used (for instance, if a pregnant person gives birth early), and hence, this regional trend has diminished in practical significance over time.

4.2. Paid paternity leave in Latin America

With respect to paid leave for fathers, as demonstrated in Figure 1, most nations in the region adopt an approach where a set number of days, in what appears to be a form of ‘quota’, is allocated for fathers, an ‘add on’ to the leave to be taken by mothers. What results are vast gaps between mothers and fathers in the amounts of paid leave offered. The regional average number of days of paid paternity leave as of 1 January 2025 was just 6.5 days. There remains a tendency in the literature to refer to leave that falls within this model as ‘daddy weeks’ (Albrecht, Fichtl and Redler Reference Albrecht, Fichtl and Redler2017, p. 49) or ‘daddy days’ (Salcedo Reference Salcedo2013). Yet such language is both a heteronormative approach – reifying the notion that parenting is primarily the role of women and only undertaken by fathers in short durations at a time – and risks glorifying or romanticising this care by fathers. Generally, in this article, I refer to ‘quotas for fathers’ and seek to make clear that they are, in these models, erroneously designed as an add-on to leave taken by mothers.

There are some notable exceptions, and some countries have attempted to expand leave entitlements. For instance, in Brazil, a new law has created a tax benefit for private companies that offer: (1) an additional sixty days of maternity leave in addition to the mandatory 120 days set forth in Law No. 5.452/1943 (National Congress of Brazil 1943); and (2) an additional fifteen days of paternity leave in addition to the mandatory five days (National Congress of Brazil, 2016). The tax benefit is the deduction of the employee’s full remuneration paid on the days for which they are given extended leave. The benefit also applies to adoptions (National Congress of Brazil 2008, Sec. 1(a)). For Brazilians who are entitled to the highest levels of leave available – 180 days of maternity leave and twenty days of paternity leave – the approach reflects one of the most generous in the region. However, by contrast, there is no statutory entitlement to shared, transferable parental leave or childcare leave (Fraga Reference Fraga2020).

4.3. Shared leave entitlements

Six countries in the region demonstrate some legislative attempts to create more equal sharing of the responsibility of care. In Chile, after all paid maternity (126 days) and paternity leave (five days) have been exhausted, mothers are entitled to an additional twelve weeks of post-maternity leave if they work less than the full-time amount of forty-five hours per week. For mothers who choose to work part-time, that is, less than 22.5 hours per week, an additional eighteen weeks of paid leave is available. Of these twelve–eighteen weeks, six weeks are transferable to fathers. Nonetheless, the system effectively disincentivises a return to full-time work for mothers after 126 days of paid leave (Government of Chile 2002, Sec. 197). Moreover, the law establishes that the extended leave is a right that originates with the mother.

In Colombia, mothers are entitled to eighteen weeks of maternity leave. At the tail-end of that period of maternity leave, a mother can transfer six weeks of that leave to the father (Congreso de la República de Colombia 2021, para. 4). This is a distinct approach and has the potential to see fathers play a greater role in care. In Uruguay, after the expiration of all maternity and paternity leave, a further six months of shared leave is available (Government of Uruguay 2013 Art. 12). As remains a challenge with shareable leave, it is entirely at the discretion of parents how that leave will be used. Finally, Cuba offers no paid paternity leave. However, after the expiration of a mother’s 126 days of paid maternity leave, mothers, fathers or grandparents are entitled to paid shared leave up until the child reaches the age of one (Ministry of Justice, Republic of Cuba 2021, Art. 8).

4.4. Leave entitlements for diverse families: adopting, same-sex and gender-diverse parents

A further question to consider is how easily a diversity of families can access legislative entitlements. I begin with adopting parents.

1. i. Adopting parents

In many instances, but certainly not all, the rights of adopting parents are recognised. Nonetheless, several countries in the region have no provisions for paid leave for adopting parents. This includes Argentina, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic. In one case, El Salvador, the leave entitlement is scarce – just three days of leave for adopting mothers and fathers (La Asamblea Legislativa de la Republica de El Salvador 2018, Art. 2(6)a(d)). Such an absence of entitlements for adopting parents of either sex shows a major discrepancy between the benefits enjoyed by biological and non-biological parents and reflects a clear point of discrimination.

In Colombia, parents are entitled to adoption leave but the leave entitlements mirror the maternity and paternity leave provisions, with adopting mothers entitled to eighteen paid weeks of leave to be taken from the date of adoption and adopting fathers offered just fourteen days (Código del Trabajo (Law No. 1822 of 2017) 2017, para. 236(2)). Here we should question the absence of any biological imperative to justify such a difference between male and female entitlements to adoption leave in different-sex couples. The same can be said of Venezuela, where adoption leave mirrors that of biological parents (twenty-six weeks for mothers and fourteen days for fathers) (Government of Venezuela 2012, Sec. VI) and Panama, where mothers are entitled to four weeks compared to two weeks for fathers (National Assembly of the Republic of Panama 2013, Art. 66). Similarly, in Nicaragua, adopting mothers are entitled to twelve weeks of paid leave (National Assembly of the Republic of Nicaragua, Art. 261) but fathers only five days (La Asamblea Nacional de la República de Nicaragua, 2014, Art. 79). Adopting parents in Mexico in different-sex couples similarly experience such a division in care responsibilities, with mothers entitled to six weeks compared to fathers’ five days (El Congreso de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos 2015, Secs. 170 II Bis and 132 XXVII Bis).

In Ecuador, in cases of adoption, either the mother or father is entitled to thirty days of allocated paid leave. In addition, in Ecuador both parents can simultaneously take such adoption leave during the first ten days (Código del Trabajo (Ecuador), Art. 152.2 (2005); Government of Uruguay 2001, Art. 35). In other words, the rights for adopting parents acknowledge that there is no biological imperative to distinguish between entitlements for fathers and mothers in different-sex couples. However, there is a provision that entitles adopting parents, depending on the age of the newborn, to the same rights as biological parents. This would see an increase in the leave available to adopting parents from the thirty days available for either parent in a two-parent family to the eighty-four days and fifteen days that are currently available to biological mothers and fathers. While this provision positively results in an increase in the paid leave days available for adopting parents overall, it reverts to the biological model of unequal responsibilities for care in a context where no biological justification can be found such as for additional weeks of post-birth recovery (Asamblea Nacional de la República del Ecuador 2023, Art. 24). Ecuador has also created an additional leave period for feeding (two hours per day up to fifteen months, from when the child is twelve-weeks-old up until eighteen-months-old), which can be taken by either parent.

While the leave entitlements themselves are inadequate, Chile, Costa Rica and Uruguay enable either parent to take paid adoption leave as reflected in Figure 2. Language such as ‘personas adoptantes’ (‘adopting people’) avoids sex-based allocations and reinforcement of gendered norms about responsibilities among mothers and fathers for childcare and childrearing. Ultimately, the leave entitlements of adopting parents are telling of the ingrained nature of parenting norms, with a clear tendency for adoption leave between mothers and fathers, where it exists, to mirror a biological justification that would allocate more leave for birth mothers, even though no such biological justification exists. These examples are also telling of the ways in which the law reform project in this domain is a complex one. Too often law fails to ‘disentangle the gender and social inequalities’ embedded in policies that reinforce the notion that mothers care in the home while fathers earn at work (Faur Reference Faur2018, p. 617).

1. ii. Same-sex and gender-diverse couples

Now I turn to the question of access to paid leave entitlements for same-sex couples. Most countries in the region have decriminalised consensual same-sex sexual acts between consenting adults and in many nations, individuals are constitutionally protected from discrimination based upon sexual orientation. The 2007 Yogyakarta Principles, which provided a framework for the human rights of LGBT persons, addressed the issue of family benefits, including the right to non-discrimination related to social welfare and other public benefits (International Commission of Jurists 2016, para. 24). Yet while law reform increasingly recognises the LGBTIQ population as equal rights holders in the realm of the family, the further question is whether paid parental leave schemes have been redesigned in response.

Particular care needs to be taken to fully understand the entitlements of same-sex couples to leave and in doing so, to recognise the diversity of same-sex family structures. The scarcity of research when it comes to the welfare entitlements of same-sex couples makes the task even harder (Wong et al. Reference Wong, Jou, Raub and Heymann2020, p. 527). It cannot be excluded that the analysis offered here misses some of the most recent developments in jurisdictions in the region, as a fast-evolving field.

A careful approach is needed to properly understand how gaps in entitlements are lived by same-sex parents. First, there may be different biological needs between same-sex couples. For example, where a female same-sex couple includes one parent who gives birth, there may be a need for post-partum leave that is distinct when both parents are adopting. Generally, where same-sex couples are recognised in law – as married or de facto couples – a parent giving birth in female same-sex couples would be entitled to maternity leave. The law then must recognise the right of the non-biological female partner to leave; yet leave schemes may not offer these entitlements (partner entitlements) by failing to acknowledge the same-sex partner’s role, such as where the partner is assumed in law to be a male parent.

A further task at hand is to understand whether other partners – in male same-sex or female same-sex partnerships – where they are both adopting parents are entitled to leave and, if so, what is the nature of such leave. Indeed even though parenthood may be planned together, the place and role of the non-biological or second partner and their recognition too often remains uncertain in law (Pontes et al. Reference Pontes, Féres-Carneiro and Seixas Magalhães2017, p. 280). As one scholar notes, it may be that civil registers need to step up to the challenge of acknowledging double maternity or double paternity (Campos Refosco and Guida Fernandes Reference Campos Refosco and Guida Fernandes2016, p. 179), which should have a parallel recognition when it comes to paid entitlements to leave. Moreover, disentanglement of pregnancy and parenting for same-sex couples becomes more imperative given that scientific innovations in reproductive technology act to shatter the notion that biological reproduction is the exclusive right of different-sex couples (Carvalho et al. Reference Carvalho, Cabral, Ferguson, Gruskin and Diniz2019, p. 1267).

As of 1 January 2025, and as illustrated in Figure 3, it is only in Colombia, because of a recent court decision, that same-sex couples receive paid leave entitlements that mirror the entitlements of different-sex parents. Although the law does not recognise same-sex paternity or maternity leave, a November 2022 decision of the Colombian Constitutional Court was tasked with the challenge of ‘how to distribute the bank of leave when it comes to same-sex parents’ (Constitutional Court of Colombia 2022, para. 52, translation by the author). Determining that there is ‘no sufficient reason to maintain a difference in treatment based neither on the type of relationship nor on the family model’ (Constitutional Court of Colombia 2022, para. 52, translation by the author), the Court’s decision resulted in the rights of same-sex parents to leave mirroring that of biological parents. Moreover, as stipulated in the decision, same-sex parents are entitled to ‘maternity leave’ benefits (even for a male-identifying same-sex couple), in which case one father receives eighteen weeks and the other fourteen days. Critical of the failure of the legislator to actually address this gap in law, the Court’s decision to effectively ‘extend’ maternity leave in this way largely stemmed from the reluctance of the court to amend legislation or create a leave regime applicable only to same-sex couples, which is not the job of the Court (Constitutional Court of Colombia 2022, p. 260). The end result, in practical terms, has been the equal treatment of all parents before the law, regardless of sexual orientation (Constitutional Court of Colombia 2022, para. 243). In a same-sex partnership, one partner would be entitled to the eighteen weeks of leave and the other to ten days of leave (Constitutional Court of Colombia 2022, para. 262).

Figure 2.

Paid adoption leave (days) for parents as of 1 January 2025.

Figure 3.

Paid leave entitlements (days) for same-sex couples as of 1 January 2025.

Note: Where legislation specifies leave entitlements in months, the calculation has been based on an average of 30.5 days per month.

Until a recent amendment, same-sex couples in Chile suffered discrimination regarding their available entitlements when compared to different-sex couples. For instance, previously in Chile, the one week of paternity leave was gender-restrictive and only available to males, thus the total duration of leave available to a same-sex female couple would have been thirty weeks (Wong et al. Reference Wong, Jou, Raub and Heymann2020, p. 531). However, a September 2022 amendment to the Labour Code (Government of Chile 2002, p. 207) provides for all people, ‘con independencia de su sexo registral por identidad de género’ (‘regardless of their registered sex by gender identity’), to enjoy the legislated rights of mothers and fathers. In Chile, therefore, as indicated in Figure 3, a female same-sex couple giving birth would be entitled to the 126 days for mothers and five days for the partner, and a male same-sex couple should enjoy those very same rights. Chile and Colombia stand out as the two jurisdictions not only guaranteeing same-sex parents paid parental leave, but the exact same entitlements as would be available to biological different-sex parents. In Brazil, since 2012, either parent in a same-sex relationship, however identifying, is entitled to ‘maternity leave’. However, the second parent – in a two-parent same-sex couple – has no entitlements, creating a point of discrimination between same-sex and different-sex couples (Souza Reference Souza2020, p. 45).

4.5. The Latin American picture of paid parental leave

By and large, the literature suggests that the successes of Latin American family policies have been minimal, possibly with the above-noted guarantees of leave access to same-sex couples. Figure 1 visibly reflects the vast gaps in leave entitlements between mothers and fathers. The legislative approach embeds a pregnancy and parenting continuum, whereby after birth, caring is understood as primarily the role of mothers. With such a notable gap in entitlements between mothers and fathers, it becomes inevitable that the days of leave taken by fathers are glorified and seen as an add-on to women’s primary caring role.

Mexico’s leadership on paternity leave was noted early in this article, one of the first countries in the region to attempt – albeit unsuccessfully – to introduce paid paternity leave. Yet this experience is a telling reminder of how a country can go from leadership to lagging. Indeed, while maternity leave in Mexico is paid through the social security system, the payment of paternity leave falls to employers (Güezmes García and Vaeza Reference Güezmes García and Vaeza2022, p. 22; Pérez-Hernández and Escobedo Reference Pérez-Hernández and Escobedo2019, p. 137). This question of who pays is a significant factor shaping how employers perceive paid parental leave and whether employees choose to use such leave, having a direct bearing on take-up rates.

Ultimately, advocates in the region decry the minimal public support for care, that caregiving has been left to families and that the vast majority of care work has been underpinned by women (Barbosa et al. Reference Barbosa, Fabris, Abbas, Caruso, Giusti and Coimbra2023, p. 1867). In short, even where relatively celebratory paid care policies have been introduced, they do not appear to have had the intended effect. Nonetheless, paid parental leave is an ever-changing landscape. At the time of print, Argentina had a bill under consideration which would raise maternity leave from ninety days (Republic of Argentina 1976, Art. 177) to 126 days; paternity from two days (Republic of Argentina 1976, Art. 158) to ninety days. The Argentinian bill uses the term ‘personas gestantes’ or ‘pregnant people’ to avoid gender discrimination and thereby enabling transgender parents, same-sex parents, single fathers or mothers or heterosexual couples to make use of the leave in equal measure (Proyecto de Ley (Bill) No. 2022-43604792-APN-SSAP#JGM, 3 May 2022). Until that bill passes, reforms in Argentina remain sector-based, such as extended entitlements to same-sex couples working in the Office of the Public Prosecutor (Faur Reference Faur2018, p. 622).