Abstract
The Czech Republic has one of the longest parental leaves in the EU, which parents can take at their own discretion. The parental leave is mostly taken by women, which means that a quite long period may negatively influence their career.
Besides the parental allowance, on the other hand, is not as flexible. Efforts to change or mitigate this setting are being made both at legislative level and by individual employers.
At the EU level, Directive 2019/1158 of the European Parliament and of the Council of the European Union (EU) aims to increase women's participation in the labour market. Employers then also introduce a range of benefits and programmes to engage the mother (parent) in work and maintain working relationships while caring for young children.
This lecture analyses the current legislation in the Czech Republic and identifies its problematic aspects. Subsequently, the article deals with the implementation of the aforementioned directive and analyses the efforts of employers to enable work-life balance of parents.