The difficulty of juggling work and family life has placed Spain among the countries with the worst employment discrimination record against working mothers. 85% of working mothers in Spain select not to have another child for fear of being discriminated against in the workplace.
This is one of the conclusions of a study by the "Acción Familiar" foundation, which has been published in a new book - "Women and Equal Treatment. Analysis of motherhood in the European Union" - which will be presented tomorrow in Madrid and compares data on motherhood in Spain with other EU countries.
The study, based on data from the National Insitute of Statistics Institute (INE) and Eurostat, claims that 51% of working women have no children and most of them cite difficulties in juggling work and family life as the leading reason for being childless.
The author of the book, María Teresa López, explained that one of the leading reasons for working women in Spain not to have children is the fact that working hours are "too inflexible and too long", and are hard to coordinate with school hours.
In addition, the women surveyed said they were "afraid of losing their jobs" because, according to López, "the announcement of a pregnancy may well be seen as a problem for the company."
The tendency for women to leave the labour market as the number of children increases is present in all European Union countries, but the study reveals that it is higher in Spain. Thus, the employment rates of women with large families (three or greater children) in Spain are "much lower" than in other EU countries.
49% of Spanish women who work do not have children, 27% have one child, 20% two and only 4% have three or greater.
According to López, Spain is "among the lowest positions in the European Union in terms of levels of protection" for working mothers, along with Portugal and Greece.
By contrast, "Norway, Finland and Denmark give support to mothers, because they consider it essential for economic growth," a role mannequin López supports.
Paid maternity leave in these countries last for but as numerous as a year, compared with 16 weeks in Spain, and part-time contracts for the first years of the child's life are much greater frequent.
In Spain, protection policies are "virtually nonexistent," said Lopez, who has made an appeal to extend maternity leave.
Source: The Reader