“We need to distribute parenting time in a more balanced way from the child’s first days” | EUROtoday

Ln January 16, the President of the Republic stunned us with the falsely formidable mission of a “demographic rearmament” aiming to “unblock the economic and social obstacles to the desire to have children”.

Several feminist organizations have rightly been moved by the selection of phrases that accompany this pronatalist coverage. Beyond a questionable and retrograde imaginative and prescient of the beginning fee, this mission is marked by the invisibility and whole ignorance of the problems of wage discrimination linked to being pregnant.

One of the important thing measures of “demographic rearmament” is the introduction into the labor code of “birth leave”, changing the present parental go away. Today, parental go away permits staff to droop their employment contract till their little one is 3 years outdated. The new beginning go away could be of shorter length (six months) however in return for increased remuneration.

Major discrimination

This measure can solely be shocking on account of its ignorance of the actual problems with motherhood on the careers of staff. To contemplate the momentary discount in wage throughout parental go away as the primary impediment to the need to have youngsters is to refuse to see that girls nonetheless undergo main discrimination due to their being pregnant, on the job market in addition to in enterprise.

On January 15, 2023, Oxfam reminded us that girls nonetheless earn on common 28.5% lower than males. Part-time jobs are 76% occupied by girls. This over-representation of girls in atypical contracts just isn’t the results of a selection. It may be defined by the truth that girls proceed to hold out nearly all of home duties, made heavier by the arrival of a kid: that is the well-known “Second Shift”. [la « deuxième journée de travail », constituée par les tâches domestiques à faire lorsque les femmes rentrent chez elles] described by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild.

The vicious circle shortly units in: absorbed by the psychological load of motherhood, girls usually discover themselves compelled to cancel conferences, adapt their skilled schedule after which flip to part-time jobs. The employer in flip entrusts them with fewer tasks, anticipates the arrival of the second little one and slowly places the glass ceiling in place.

Professional profession at risk

The keystone of this discriminatory system is the unequal distribution of go away between spouses. Maternity go away is now sixteen weeks, eight of that are obligatory.

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