Indian mothers take a median of 130 working days of parental leave after a birth, while Indian fathers take just seven, according to a new cross-country study of parental leave uptake released by global HR and payroll firm Deel.
The analysis, authored by Deel’s founding economist Lauren Thomas and titled “Generous government parental leave policies don’t guarantee gender equality,” draws on anonymised time-off, payroll, and HR records for 7,285 parents across 97 countries between 2021 and 2026. It focuses on 12 countries with large enough samples for reliable comparisons, including India, Sweden, the UK, the US, Germany, France, Spain, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, Singapore, and Australia.
The 130-day figure for Indian mothers maps closely to the 26 weeks of paid maternity leave guaranteed under the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017, for the first two children. The seven-day figure for Indian fathers sits at the lower end of the five-to-15-day range common at Indian private sector employers, where there is no central statutory paternity entitlement.
“The gender gap shows up again and again: mothers take much longer, less interrupted, and lower paid leave, are much more likely to use vacation days for parental leave, and are more likely to leave their job after returning,” Thomas writes in the report.
Pooling all 12 countries, Deel finds that fathers take 16.4 fewer weeks off than mothers after controlling for age, pay, seniority, occupation, and leave entitlement. The widest gap sits in the UK, where mothers take a median 195 days against 10 days for fathers; the narrowest is Spain’s, where fathers take 70 weekdays against 85 for mothers under a non-transferable, fully paid entitlement for each parent.
Deel’s India findings also point to a retention cost. Across the 12 countries, 30% of mothers had left their job within six months of leave ending, compared with 23% of fathers. The firm notes that Indian mothers show a sharper exit pattern than Indian fathers in the six-month window after return, in line with the global trend.
On how leave is taken, India sits closer to the consolidated end of the spectrum: over 95% of Indian mothers and between 68% and 86% of Indian fathers take their leave in a single block, well above the fragmented pattern seen in Sweden and the Netherlands.
