Abstract
This study analyzes the situation of women in the Czech labor market with relation to childcare policies. The Czech Republic is among the European countries with the most generous systems of maternity and parental leave, allowing parents (usually mothers) to take a leave from work and get financial compensation for the period of up to 4 years after a single birth.
While there exists an option to collect childcare compensation until the child's second birthday without cutting on the total value of benefits received, the majority of mothers stay at home taking care of their children for at least three years following each birth. This is partially driven by social norms prevailing in the Czech society, which strongly believes that children should spend time exclusively with their mothers until the age of three.
The other driving factor for this state of being is very limited supply of places in public childcare facilities. Public nurseries are scarce (there are only 44 in the whole country) and there is no legal body responsible for their operations.
The number of places in public kindergartens does not meet the demand for them, especially in large cities. In 2013 60,281 applications to public kindergartens were turned down, what corresponds to more than 16% of the total number of children attending public childcare.