Dani Marinova

Dani Marinova

Associate Professor of Political Science

Working Papers

If you’re interested in any of the following working papers, please get in touch.

González Motos, Sheila & Marinova, Dani M. “Equal Leave, Equal Care? Evidence from the 2021 Paternity Leave Reform in Spain.”

Abstract This manuscript investigates whether equal and non-transferable paternity leave can promote more equitable caregiving within couples. Exploiting a natural experiment created by Spain’s 2021 paternity leave reform—which established a 16-week leave entitlement equal to maternity leave—we analyze its effects on fathers’ involvement in both physical and cognitive childcare. Drawing on an original two-wave survey of over 3,400 partnered parents of children born between 2018 and 2022, we estimate short- and medium-term impacts of increasing paternity leave duration. Results show modest gains in fathers’ participation in physical care during the early months following birth, but these effects dissipate after return to work. No significant shifts are observed in the distribution of cognitive labor, which remains disproportionately shouldered by mothers. Effects do not vary significantly by birth order or socioeconomic status. Our findings suggest that even under ideal policy conditions—equal, well-paid, non-transferable leave entitlements—progress toward gender-equal caregiving is limited. The study highlights the persistence of traditional gender roles, particularly in mental and anticipatory care tasks, and calls for broader institutional and cultural change beyond parental leave policy.

Marinova, Dani M. “Can Family Policy Close the Gender Gap in Political Engagement? Evidence from Two Decades of Reform in Europe”

Abstract Gender gaps in political interest and political efficacy persist across European democracies despite women's substantial gains in education and labor market participation. One source of their persistence is the political motherhood penalty: the parenthood-driven widening of the gender gap that emerges in early motherhood and persists across the life course. We argue that this penalty is partly conditioned by parental leave policies, and we disentangle four mechanisms through which leave operates. Three are cushioning mechanisms that act on mothers directly — time away from the workplace, financial resources from paid leave, and welfare-state contact. The fourth is a redistributive mechanism that acts on fathers and on household norms: the gender-equalizing signal of non-transferable leave for fathers. We test these predictions using eleven rounds of the European Social Survey (2002–2023) merged with the European Parental Leave Policy database, exploiting within-country variation across birth cohorts in twenty-one democracies. Generous paid leave for mothers narrows the gap on political interest and internal efficacy among parents of young children; non-transferable leave for fathers narrows the gap on political interest among parents of older children, consistent with gradual norm change; and the generosity of mothers' welfare-state contact narrows the gap specifically on external political efficacy. Very long total leave duration, by contrast, widens the gap. The political motherhood penalty is partly a policy phenomenon, with implications for the design of family policies that govern the transition to parenthood.

Marinova, Dani M. “Involved but Not Responsible: The Evidence on Paternity Leave and Domestic Responsibility.”

Abstract Paternity leave has emerged as a cornerstone of gender equality policy, yet its ability to shift the domestic division of care remains contested. I argue that apparent mixed results reflect a failure to distinguish involvement — the execution of domestic tasks — from responsibility — accountability for care as an ongoing domain. A field that evaluates policy success on involvement criteria alone can register apparent progress — fathers doing more — while leaving the responsibility structure intact, and with it the domestic bottleneck that keeps the gender revolution stalled. Paternity leave is well-designed to shift involvement but structurally limited in shifting responsibility: the responsibility position does not dissolve with a temporary absence. Each pattern in the evidence follows from this distinction: positive effects concentrate in discretionary tasks and fade because responsibility never shifted; null results emerge where responsibility indicators are used; and the limited evidence on solo leave points where the framework predicts — larger and more durable effects when the father must hold the responsibility position without a maternal default. I conclude that the field's central task is not only to measure what fathers do more, but to ask whether the accountability position has shifted — and to study paternity leave alongside the broader leave architectures and complementary policies that make this structurally possible.