this type of flexible arrangements has been successful in raising female participation such provisions however should be carefully balanced between men and women to avoid increasing the relative cost of hiring mothers to promote more involvement of fathers in family care and to minimise the risk that parttime arrangements may trap mothers in lower ranking career tracks and damage their future prospects flexible workarrangements may also be less appropriate in countries where only a minority of women can afford to opt for parttime work maternal leave constitutes a cornerstone of modern welfare states and can have positive impacts on female labour market outcomes recent evidence from oecd countries shows that paid maternity leave increases the likelihood that women work as it gives them an incentive to work prior to childbirth and offers them employment protection to facilitate their return to the labour market afterwards adema clark and frey however when maternal leave is excessively costly for employers and paternal leave is considerably less generous it may also play a role in perpetuating gender gaps by increasing the cost of employing a woman relative to a man