Employees and caregivers... A career obstacle

• This Thursday is the national day of caring employees, people who take care of a dependent or sick loved one.

• However, 57% of caregivers are women.

  An additional task that can have deleterious effects on the professional career.

In Elsa's apartment, there is the smell of cold coffee, the dishes from the day before and the pasta dish that has not had time to be finished.

Everything breathes the lack of time.

And for good reason, the 40-year-old leads a double life: employed in IT and home help for her mother, who suffers from a degenerative disease.

Elsa is one of the millions of caregivers in France, those people who work and must at the same time take care of a sick or dependent loved one.

A task that overflows everywhere in his life, especially professional: “Being a helper is necessarily a little sacrificing his career, sighs the Montpellier.

I miss important meetings and files by being part-time, I do not participate in discussions during the coffee break which help to climb the ladder in the company, since I am mainly teleworking to provide home help … But being a woman is what you have to believe: sacrificing yourself for others.

»

Gender inequality

In France, the majority of caregivers are women (57% according to the BVA barometer*).

A figure that even rises to 74% if the parent's state of dependency worsens, according to the 2011

report . Women carers also devote more time to it than men: on average two hours more per day.

Hélène Rossinot, doctor of public health and author of the books

and

(2019 and 2022, Edition de l'Observatoire), affirms it: helping is a task too often assigned to women.

"There is this idea still very underlying in society that it is in the feminine nature to devote herself and to be there for her fellow man, whereas the man must think of his career and above all of himself- same.

To illustrate her point, the specialist takes the case of Catherine Guillouard, former CEO of RATP who announced her surprise resignation in September 2022, in order to have time to take care of her elderly parents: "I expect a big French boss does the same thing, but it doesn't happen".

career sacrifice

Because as for Elsa, the role of caregiver generally has a strong impact on professional life.

In France, a third of salaried carers say they have reduced their number of working hours: 10% of male carers are part-time and 25% of women.

“It's a choice that isn't a choice: I'm not going to abandon my mother in the name of a raise or a promotion, it doesn't make sense.

But it's a sacrifice for my career, clearly, ”continues the computer scientist.

No choice either on the side of Mathilde, a 37-year-old lawyer: “I wanted to delegate to my brother, but he is unable to do his own cooking, so prepare meals for my mother or watch over her… We women , we have to do everything ourselves, because otherwise nothing is done.

“The 30-year-old says she discovered with this role of helping a” another mental load “.

It is no longer a question of managing everything with regard to the education of children, but of taking charge of one's own parents.

“You have to think of everything, for yourself, but also for everyone else: children, husband and now my mother.

Inevitably, the brain is busy with all this and less efficient to work.

»

“The right decision”, but at what cost?

Hélène Rossinot confirms the deleterious impact of this mission for the professional aspect: “It increases fatigue, decreases concentration, attacks mental and physical health.

Companies lack a culture on the case of caregivers and these employees are often stigmatized or sidelined”.

It is high time to change things, believes the expert, especially since with the aging of the population, the proliferation of chronic diseases and the fact that the elderly are increasingly staying at home, the number of employees caregivers is likely to increase sharply.

An observation that Mathilde lives bitterly.

She has seen many important files denied to her since taking care of her mother: "The saddest thing is that my mother neglected her career to compensate for my father's incompetence in co-managing our education and I do the same with mine for her by compensating my brother.

We are the left behind”.

She admits it in a whisper, as if out of shame, some evenings, when the mother is finally calm and in bed, Mathilde imagines what her career would have been like without her parent's dementia: "I made the right decision, I am convinced of it.

I had to take care of my mother.

But when I think about what it's costing me, and what I could have become without it, it's hard not to get depressed.

»

Detrimental consequence at work

The reduction in the volume of hours and the use of part-time work also make women more precarious: "We receive lower salaries when we have to spend more to watch over our loved ones", Elsa is in despair.

The lack of financial aid is sorely felt in his bank accounts.

Chloé, a 52-year-old teacher who takes care of her father, gets angry: “Do you know why there is so little funding and consideration for employee caregivers?

Because they are almost exclusively women and we imagine that it is their natural role to sacrifice themselves.

There would be 90% of helping men, the State would have released financial support and shock measures to help them.

We are still paying for our disrepute.

»

For her, no part-time work possible, "the salary would be really too low to live otherwise", but an immense mental load and a feeling of incomprehension on the part of her colleagues: "For them, taking care of my father, it doesn't have to be that difficult or energy-intensive.

They have trouble with my fatigue, they think I do too much, but what do they know?

Being a helper is really a double jeopardy: you work harder than the others and you get called lazy.

But hey, we're women, we can take it all, I guess..."

Use

Equal pay tops the concerns of French employees

Company

Dependency: "20 Minutes" and UFC-Que Choisir answer your questions about caregivers

*8th wave carried out by BVA on June 16 and 23, 2022 by telephone.

Sample of 2,006 people, representative of the French population aged 15 and over, according to the quota method.

• Economy

• caregivers day

• Employees

• Women

• mental load

• Inequality

• Addiction