REAL CHOICE?

In todays political climate freedom of choice is generally considered a good thing in almost any area. Even the left sing praise to choice and competition in an ever louder manner, both here in Sweden and elsewhere. Listen to the British Prime Minister Tony Blair, for an example of a Social Democrat trying to bring more choice into the social services.

The same thing is increasingly true in Sweden. Developement has been fairly large over the last couple of decades and we can now choose our telephone company, our electricity provider and we can choose between a number of different airline companies. All this is very good.

However there are areas in which the freedom of choice doens't appear to be all that free, often in the name of polical correctness. One such area is gender equality. While I'm sure the intensions are honest, the choice we're supposed to have doesn't seem like much of a choice in some areas.

For instance there's the parental insurance, which is constructed so that the parents can decide how they want to split it. Today, mothers use up most of the time, with the effect that they are worse off on the labour market. To fix this the government is now threatening with changing the law in order to force parents to split the insurance 50/50. Basically, they're saying: Feel free to choose for yourself how you want to split the insurance, but if you don't split it in half we'll make you do it.

Not much of a real choice there, eh? Indeed, the fact that women generally uses up most part of the parental insurance does give them a real disadvantage in the labour market. But they know that, and families know that, and still they decide to split it like that. The government should think about why that is instead of just trying to find a quick fix for the effects. One such reason could be that the roof in the insurance is too low, and as the father on average makes more money than the mother the family as a whole loses more money if the father stays at home and the mother goes to work. Or it may just be down to a matter of preference.

No matter what the government should leave that decision with the parents. And they should accept whatever decision the parents makes. Of course this doesn't just go for this issue, but in general. If the government allows people to choose - and they should most of the time - they should also accept and respect the choices people make.

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