Lack of child care for working parents

Few USA or European companies have systematic policies for dealing with today's newly emerged norm of working parents with need for outside child-care. It is still common for women to curtail employment because of child bearing while men do not. Women thereby take less demanding, lower paying jobs, and it is often the case that the structures, habits, values and atmospheres of work become organized around the availability of those people without first-line responsibility for children.

Even though Sweden has liberal maternity and paternity leaves, 85% of all leaves are taken by women, which results in corporations viewing women workers as being out of the mainstream in terms of promotion and career advancement. France has a strong national system of public child care, which has enabled many women to work, but there is still strong occupational segregation and no legal means to pursue equal opportunity goals. Germany has generous national benefits but few private efforts to adapt work to family needs. In Russia in 1992, the Parliament and some city governments are dismantling the once elaborate Soviet system of child care. The Moscow City Council, for example, proposes to close about a third of the city's day-care centres within two years.