Alejandra Olcese
Updated Monday, February 19, 2024-04:07
Wage gap Women lose 28% more income than their partners due to the arrival of their first child
The increase in the duration of
paternity leave
that has been recorded in recent years has not served to prevent families from having to resort to leave
in
order to care for their children, a figure that has grown again in 2023 and that It falls mainly on
women
.
Until
1989
,
women
in Spain only had the right
to two weeks of maternity leave,
but in March of that year, seven months before the general elections, the then president Felipe González approved the extension of that leave to
16 weeks.
period that continues today. Paternity leave remained as it was: in just four days.
In March 2007, the Government of
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero
, which was in its first term, extended the permit for men to
15 days,
and it was not until ten years later (in
2017
) when the Executive of
Mariano Rajoy
raised it four
weeks
once the economic crisis and budget cuts are over. The arrival of
Pedro Sánchez
to Moncloa is what has allowed this permit to be gradually increased until it is fully equipped with that of women: 5 weeks in 2018, 8 weeks in 2019, 12 in 2020 and
16 since 2021
, a measure that promotes
equality between men and women
not only with regard to childcare, but also with respect to their career prospects. The fact that it is the same task for a company if a man and a woman have a child - since both will be absent from their jobs for 16 weeks - means that they do not have a preference for hiring them, as could happen before.
Now, the Executive intends to increase these leaves to
20 weeks in this legislature,
as stated in the investiture agreement between PSOE and Sumar: "We will extend paternity and maternity leave up to 20 weeks, incorporating greater flexibility with work part-time from week 16 and we will advance in the implementation of paid leave for care with the aim of paying at least 4 weeks per child of the recently created parental leave for care, starting in August 2024.
It is curious, however, that this increase that has occurred in the weeks of leave for the father - which can also be divided into two parts and the second can be enjoyed not simultaneously with the mother -
has not prevented the number of Leaves to care for children continue to rise
, despite the fact that fewer children are born every year. These are two indicators that do not seem to correlate, although extending the father's rest period should facilitate reconciliation for longer.
The number of leaves of
absence
requested annually in Spain was growing from 2017 to 2020, a year in which due to the pandemic there was a sharp decrease (7.9%), mainly motivated by the number of workers who started working from home, which facilitated conciliation, and in other cases due to insecurity about their own employment that discouraged them from requesting this type of permit.
In 2021 (when paternal leave was consolidated at 16 weeks) and 2022, the trend continued downward, with interannual falls of 12.3% and 1%, respectively, which allowed us to drop below the threshold of 50,000 annually, which could point out that equalization with respect to the rights of the mother had allowed a downward path to begin in the number of leaves of absence. However,
2023 has once again represented a turning point
: birth leave
has grown by 15.5%
year-on-year to
54,596 in the year.
In
84%
of the cases, it was
women
who took advantage of this possibility, which represents an increase from 70% last year and 74% since 2021. Inequality remains lower, however, than there were in 2017, when nine out of ten leaves of absence fell on mothers.
Different factors answer the question of
why they are always
the ones who sacrifice their careers. Given that on average women have
lower salaries
than men (they earn 18.3% more from the ages of 20 to 34, according to the INE), there are cases in which the salary is more profitable for the family. of it that is no longer perceived; while in other cases
the woman's greater predisposition to care
or the behaviors inherited from past roles influence. These are usually decisions that are made by mutual agreement within the family, but it is worrying that as a society it is always decided that the woman is the one who has to interrupt her career, especially given the
penalty
that this entails in the future.
To reverse this trend, the ideal would be
to facilitate the reconciliation
of professional and family life, thus preventing anyone - neither men nor women - from having to take leave when they do so because they have no other choice. Increasing
public places in centers for 0 to 3 years old
- especially in overcrowded cities like Madrid - and
making business hours more flexible
would be useful.
Reducing the maximum
working day could help, but as long as this translates into fewer daily working hours and not more vacation days, as seems likely to be possible.
The
extension of paternity and maternity leave
to 20 weeks may not have an impact on leaves of absence, in light of how these have evolved in recent years. This measure, however, has been useful to "slightly" reduce the gender gap in employment, since after the period of sick leave,
mothers now reduce their working hours to a lesser extent
, as corroborated in a report by the
Iseak Foundation. .
However, this increase has not only had positive effects, since the
probability of remaining employed
a year after the birth of the child
has been reduced
for both men and women, as confirmed by this organization, which believes that employees should be encouraged to two parents enjoy leave equally but not at the same time and calls for more reforms such as "
free pre-childhood schooling
and a
universal child benefit
", which would help close the gender gap in employment in the medium term.