This article assesses 27 European parental leave policies regarding their compliance with an ideal leave policy model that best supports gender equality in the division of labour. Given the difficulties in defining such an ideal leave model, the article makes this assessment in two stages. Stage 1 exploits the most salient results of the empirical literature in order to define an ideal leave model that foresees the provision of 14 months of well-paid leave, where half of the leave is reserved for fathers. An ‘Equal Gender Division of Labour’ indicator is developed to assess the performance of different countries regarding their compliance with the ideal leave model. Stage 2 tests the sensitivity of the results with regard to three different scenarios that account for alternative assumptions about (1) the actual duration of leave that is supposed to be ‘ideal’, (2) the significance of providing leave only in combination with payments and (3) the importance of reserving some of the provided leave for fathers.