Dr. Helen Russell:

It is like a system of parental leave, I suppose, but it is paid. I cannot remember off the top of my head but we are talking about close to one year or whatever in terms of what a person can take. They also have many other benefits and arrangements in their welfare system. Although they have a narrower pay gap, it is hard to then pin that on the parent's leave. There is also a much different system of childcare provision. As I mentioned, they also have the collective bargaining systems. They have much narrower wage differentials across the board. It is kind of that whole package of measures that leads to a narrow gap. They are not nirvana, however, in that there is still a pay gap even in these countries. That is partly to do with occupational segregation in respect of what jobs men and women are doing in the economy. There are still those patterns, even in the Nordic countries. They have not completely nailed it.