The interplay between institutions : A feminist institutional perspective on the parental leave policy in Chile

• Main Author: Munoz, Marcia
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Statsvetenskapliga institutionen 2015
• Subjects: historical institutionalism; parental leave; Chile; gender; work-family balance
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-264367

This paper aims to explain how the interplay between formal and informal institutions affects the potentially gendered outcomes of political reforms. The case of the Chilean parental leave reform of 2011 is used as an example of a political reform addressing gender equality. Within the framework of historical institutionalism analysis of formal and informal institutions are made separately to proceed to merge the two and discuss how they interact with each other and affect the outcomes of the reform. The formal institution is studied by analyzing the construction of the reform itself and the informal institutions are studied by analyzing interviews with parents making use of this reform.                       The results of this research show that both formal and informal institutions follow a historical pattern of social norms placing the responsibility of childcare on mothers. Formal institutions seems to follow a certain path dependency in the way they are created and informal institutions affect and counteract the small possibilities to change given by the formal institution. Possible indications of critical junctures challenging this path dependency were however found and show a potential period of significant adjustment in informal institutions and the reform might be seen as an example of change.