What works in Spain

Spain has implemented major gender-equality reforms across family policy and violence prevention. Spain's Equal Non-Transferable Paternity Leave Reform (2017–2021) extended fully paid paternity leave from 2 to 16 weeks, raising father uptake by ~20 percentage points, with 75% of fathers now taking leave simultaneously at birth. Spain's Organic Law 1/2004 established 106 specialised gender-violence courts that handled 2 million complaints and secured 700,000 convictions over 15 years. Additionally, Spain supports women's entrepreneurship and youth employment through initiatives like Innovatia 8.3, which promotes entrepreneurship in scientific-technological fields, and Madrid-based programmes such as Opcíon 3, which secured 1,122 employment contracts for 2,248 young participants in 2021.